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HENRY GEORGE’S LATEST WORK.

Protection or Free Trade ?

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Introductory.

Clearing ground.

Of mettiod.

Protection as a universal need.

The protective unit.

Trade.

Production and producers.

Tariffs for revenue.

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The encouragement of Indus-
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The home market and home
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Exports and imports.

Confusions arising from the
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The development of manu-
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Protection and producers.

Effect of protection on Am-
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Protection and wages.

The abolition of protection.

Inadequacy of the free trade
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The real ^feakness of free
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The real strength of pro-
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The paradox.

The robber that takes aH
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True free trade.

The lion in the path.

Free trade and socialism.

Practical politics.

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“PAPA’S OWN GIRL”

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GOLDEN OTLLS

A PEAL IN SEVEN CHANGES

m E/LEANCILLOK

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GOLDEN BELLS.

A PEAL IN SEVEN CHANGES.

BY R. E. FRANCILLON.

CHANGE THE FIRST.

OP TIME.

In these days of art, culture, science, philanthropy, wis-
dom, progress, enlightenment, and general triumph of civ-
ilization, it would be a hard task to fix upon the most hid-
eously dismal spot in this island. A score of great cities
would put in conflicting square miles of progress and tri-
umph in the shape of slums. Wherefore, to simplify the
problem, I subtract some eighty odd years from the cent-
ury, thus obtaining an age of darkness when, bad as things
were, people at any rate had room to breathe, and could
reach blue and green in something less than a day’s jour-
ney by machinery. And setting aside the simple rookeries
of our forefathers, and our own development of them into
reproductions of Inferno, the most hideously dismal spot
was, and is, the work of a caprice of nature. And there
this story begins.

It is an extensive tract on the southwestern coast where
anybody standing in the midst of it can still, without the
faintest trouble on the part of fancy, imagine himself in
some exceptionally ill-favored portion of the region where
the children of Israel lost their way for forty years.
Though the sea is hard by , it can be neither heard nor
seen. Though a small fishing village, and the sparse dwell-
ings of a scattered parish, are more or less within reach,
these are likewise invisible. Nothing meets the eye but a
jumble of sand-hills seeming to reach, though in reality
blotting out, the horizon; here bare, and there patched or
tufted with gray reed, not thick enough to bind them.
And nothing meets the ear but the swish of the wind
through the reeds as it drives the sand into the cheeks and

2

GOLDEN BELLS.

stings them, as with a million needle-points, well-nigh past
bearing. There are no paths, for the simple reason that
this same wind would obliterate them in an hour. And so
devoid is it of landmarks, so monotonous are the mounds
and hollows, that one might lose one’s self there, if not
for quite so long as the Jews on their way to the Land of
Promise, yet for a very uncomfortably appreciable time.
And should the wind fall, and an evening mist creep over
the wilderness from the sea, or a drizzle blot out such bear-
ings as may be found, something worse might happen, and
has happened, than mere loss of way.

For there have been times when those heaving mounds
of sand have become so many waves in motion, shifting
the face of the desert, changing the course of the stream
that somehow filters through them, and ingulfing every
creature and thing. And thereby hung a legend concern-
ing this realm of desolation which any person who has seen
the place might be almost pardoned for half believing. It
was certainly striking, and on a larger scale than the
legends of this little island often are. Where the sand
rolled and the gray sea-reeds grew — so the story ran— had
once been a great and fiourishing city in times that must
have been ancient even when Arthur was king. There
had been palaces and markets and temples, and a great port
where the fieets of Sidon traded for tin. The name of the
city, set in a fiourishing region, was forgotten; but there it
had grown in wealth and luxury, a rival to Carthage or
Marseilles, till, all in a single night, a great wind blew a
sand cloud from the East, and left not a solitary sign of
what once had been. Yesterday a great and glorious city
— to-day, a heap of sand.

No doubt there was some evidence in the neighborhood
of a civilization earlier than that of a Roman colony. There
was an amphitheater of turf about half a mile from the
limit of the tract which county archaeologists failed to
identify as Roman, and there were traces of early workings
for metal made in a more ancient and yet more skillful
manner than that of the Roman engineers. But these are
but poor evidence on which to base a legend which after
all, is not peculiar to the parish of Porthtyre. A great
city lies also at the bottom of the Lake of Bala, in North
Wales; some great Irish Bog (I forget which) covers an-
other; Lake Van, in Armenia, overwhelms the world’s
earliest capital ; and the doings of Vesuvius belong to his-
tory. Nevertheless the legend had outlasted what must
have been, at a moderate computation, something ap-
proaching three thousand years; and when a story is as old
as that, it is plainly past contradicting.

But what can the barely possible events of near upon

I

GOLDEN BELLS.

three thousand years ago have to do with days that some
among us can still remember? Clearly, nothing. And,
therefore, let them go—even as our own glories will have to
pass some day, when Nature becomes wearied out at last
with us and our ways.

sK 5i« * ♦ jje

When old Oliver Graith, of Zion Farm, near Porthtyre,
died, he turned out to have been an even richer man than
the neighbors had looked for, though he had always been
reputed as something more than warm. His farm was un-
incumbered freehold; he had several thousands in the
hands of a banker at Eedruth ; and the extent of so large a
fortune for a plain farmer, was accountable for, less by his
sober ways and thrifty habits than by the constant success
that used to attend his share in a cutter that, war or no
war, traded with Spain. And the fortune was practically
all the greater because by his death it was not divided.
Subject to a life charge for the benefit of his widow—
nearly thirty years younger than he — everything went,
land, money, trading share, and all, to his only child, Oliver
Graith the younger, then eighteen, the sole trustee being
Mrs. Graith ’s first cousin, the Eedruth banker, Lancelot
Ambrose by name.

In short, Oliver Graith the younger was so. good a match
as to render natural and justifiable, in every way, the pro-
posal of the trustee that his only remaining unmarried
daughter, Susan, should keep the young widow company
for awhile in the early days of her mourning. Otherwise,
no trustee whom anybody would trust with a farthing
would have been so insane as to throw a very tolerably
pretty and unquestionably amiable girl of seventeen into
the daily companionship of the widow’s son. And, justi-
fiable under all the circumstances as it was, there were not
wanting neighboring farmers’ wives with daughters of
their own who declared that they would never have done
any such thing for the world.

There seemed, however, but little danger, though the
visit of Susan Ambrose to Zion Farm seemed little likely
to come to an early end. Oliver liked his young kins-
woman, whose acquaintance he first made on the day of
his father’s funeral; but her presence by the hearth or in
the dairy, where she proved herself worth double her
weight in gold, had no apparent effect in keeping him
about the house or the fields, where a young farmer should
be. For it must be owned that there was an ominous
touch of wildness about the heir, who, for the rest, was as
fine a young fellow for his seventy -one inches as was to
be found in that parish or, for that matter, in a dozen
more. During his father’s life he had been kept with a

4

GOLDEN BELLS,

tight hand; and opportunities for the sowing of wild oatgf
at Porthtyre were exceedingly few, even for a youngster
who had the means. But he had once made a trip to San
Sebastian (or somewhere near it) on board the Lively Peg,
the before- mentioned cutter, with the Basque skipper;
and he never after that took again with real kindness to
the farm. That was when he was sixteen. The trip had
been taken against orders; he had slipped on board with-
out even the skipper’s knowledge; and when he came
back, the precocious prodigal was welcomed home, not
with the fatted calf, but with the soundest of thrashings —
a discipline no doubt efficacious in most cases, but only
confirming in Oliver a taste for adventure that must have
come from some very far-off ancestry indeed.

And there were other signs of a roving temper about the
lad that would unquestionably have given his father
trouble in mind and estate had not the latter died before his
somewhat slow wits had time to observe them. The first
thing he did on coming into his estai e was the open an-
nouncement of his determination to share the next trip of
the Lively Peg — he wanted, he said, to learn the business,
and to see the world.

Mrs. Graith, a rather delicate, timid creature, who had
run altogether to motherhood, and should, for complete
mental and moral health, have had a brood of a dozen at
least instead of one masterful bantam to cackle over,
dictated to Susan a letter to Mr. Ambrose at Eedruth, ask-
ing anxiously for counsel, and suggesting the interposition
of the influence of a trustee. Lancelot Ambrose did better
than answer the letter by another. Without delay he rode
over to Zion Farm, and gave the widow the soundest advice
in the world.

“Green shoulders can’t grow gray heads,” he argued.
“ ’Tis quite right and proper a young fellow should see the
world before he settles down— if he don’t before he’ll be
wanting to do it after; and then there’s Old Nick to pay.
Danger, Mrs. Graith? Of course there’s danger. You’re
in danger at this minute. So is Susan. So am I. And so
mysterious are the hands of Providence that, ’pon my soul,
I’d sooner put myself in those of your good Captain Vasco;
one knows where one is with him. Think of it, my dear
cousin — for nigh twenty years has the Lively Peg been
crossing the Ba^^ of Biscay, and back again, and not once
has she lost a cargo, or been sniffed by the coastguard
I‘d have gone myself if I’d had the chance at his age. Yef^r
— ^let him go. A young fellow’s none the worse for a bit c/
spirit, Susan— eh?”

‘‘But the farm?” feebly protested the widow, convince^
by his genial eloquence, but not persuaded.

GOLDEN BELLS.

5

“Oil, you’re a first-rate farmer yourself — a long way
better than Nol. A farmer of eighteen! Why, he’ll be
following oats with wheat, and forgetting the fallow ; and
every hind will be leading him by the nose. Yes; he’s a
clever young shaver, and he’ll be a fine farmer one of
these days; but Rome wasn’t built in a day. So I say, let
him go.”

So not only was the scale cast on the side of indulgence
by the stronger will, but Mr. Ambrose — surely a pattern to
all trustees— allowed Oliver a handsome sum for pocket-
money out of the balance in his hands, so that the lad
started as a sort of prince among his fellows. He kissed
his mother affectionately, and Susan shyly, and off he
went, thinking how good and sweet they both were till the
spray of the Atlantic swept all stay-at-home thoughts
away. Adventures are to the adventurous; and this sec-
ond voyage gave him his heart’s desire. The famous bay
showed him what it could do in a storm ; and the Lively
Peg showed him also what she could do. For one whole
day they were chased by a French sloop, and on another
had to show white wings to an English cruiser, narrowly
escaping a hole in her stern. I doubt if Mrs. Graith, when
she sighed of danger, had any real notion of the exceed-
ingly lively nature of Peg’s voyages, or she would have
protested a good deal more strongly before giving in. And
the risks— Oliver had reason to guess afterward — were even
greater than they seemed ; and that the excellent Basque
skipper had that on board which, had they been taken and
overhauled, would have insured for him and all his crew a
swing from the yard-arm. The Peg certainly lay off a
quiet spot on the French coast that was not on the route,
while the skipper had himself rowed ashore, nothing com-
ing of the iiKudent in the way of trade.

However, San Sebastian, or somewhere near it, was
reached at last ; and business having to wait on all sorts of
conditions — the state of the moon and of the tide, and the
arrival of a train of loaded mules that could not travel by
daylight— he went ashore to spend his money. Oliver
Graith was a jovial and free-hearted as well as a free-
handed and fine-looking young fellow, and there were
plenty to appreciate him at San Sebastian, both he and she.
His circle was anything but aristocratic, but exceedingly
merry ; and was all the more fascinating for being a trifle
savage. Mr. Lancelot Ambrose, in underrating the dan-
gers of the sea, must have forgotten the dangers of the
shore — or he may not have known them; as an untraveled
man. The air seemed alive with daggers and kisses ; and
which were the more formidable it would be hard to say.
And in another matter the wisdom of Lancelot Ambrose

6

GOLDEN BELLS,

failod to be justified. When Graith came home to his
mother and to Susan it is true that he did settle down for
awhile, and even took walks over the farm, spending the
evenings in chatting to the two women about the trifles of
the day. But this was not for long. It must be owned
that, simple as Porthtyre was, it contained, mainly among
the fisher- folk, about as rough and wild a lot as could well
be found anywhere ; and to these Oliver was attracted as
inevitably as the needle to the magnet. He was not a bad
young fellow. He was neither profligate nor tippler. But
he was overflowing with high spirit, reveling in strength
and vigor and life ; he simply could not sit down ; while he
unconsciously felt himself imprisoned in the narrow world
of Porthtyre. There was no Australasia, no Africa, wherein
a man might stretch his tingling limbs in those days. Trips
to Ferrol and San Sebastian became more frequent ; and,
between them, he took a leading part in similar enterprises
out of pure deviltry. Then he was a splendid cragsman —
so complete that he could descend the face of the Gull Rock,
after a night’s carouse, without the help of a rope, and
reach the bottom sober. No wonder he became a sort of
king in the place, or rather a Prince Hal, even without the
help of the unlimited money with which Lancelot Ambrose
so kindly continued to supply him, without any useless
worry of counsels or questions.

At last, however, arrived the eventful day when he was
to become his own master in law as well as in fact, and
when he was not to have even the slight trouble of applying
to the most agreeable of trustees when he Avanted funds.
It Avas his twenty -first birthday — long looked for, come at
last ; though Avhy he should be so anxious for the arrival
of a mere formality is by no means clear.

The widoAv and the girl, remembering the nature of the
day, and impressed Avith a A^ague sense of its importance,
could not refrain from conscious adniiration of the young
prodigal as he stepped into the kitchen for a hearty break-
fast before starting for Redruth to have a final business
interview Avith Mr. Lancelot Ambrose. They had reason.
Fullness of muscle and bigness of frame, Avith rather
strongly -marked features, gave the ex-infant a look of ma-
turity beyond his years; he might pass already for eight-
and-twenty, and Avould therefore, in all likelihood, look little
older at eight-and-twenty than to-day, and perhaps younger.
But there was plenty of youth, and to spare, in the sea-
burned complexion, the curly brown hair, the keen gray
eyes, and the ready smile that had already played Avhole-
sale, though far from irremediable, havoc among the hum-
bler beauties of Northern Spain. He might haA^e all the
faults under the sun, saA-e two. No one looking at him

GOLDEN BELLS,

7

could imagine him either turning tail or telling a lie;
and if charity covers the sins of others, courage and
truth go very far toward covering a man’s own. Though
dressed in his best, he failed to look awkward — which
argued a rarer virtue still: that Oliver Graith was not
vain.

‘ • Many, many happy returns of the day, my best of
boys!” said the widow, kissing him on tiptoe, with an April
smile.

“ Many happy returns of the day, Cousin Oliver!” said
Susan Ambrose, holding out a frank hand in which lay a
watch-case of her own working, embroidered with the
quintessence of wisdom:

Do What You Ought Come What Come Can.

Oliver bent down his lips to her cheek. “Thank you
both!” said he. “And now for breakfast. Lord, if I get
as much hungrier next year as I’ve been getting the last,
you’ll find out what Come Can’t; and that’s a meal too
many. ‘ Do as I ought?’ I’ll begin at once — I’ll do every-
thing as I ought by that chine. And, truly, mother, I
really do want to be a good boy, now that I’m a man.”

“ But you are, Oliver !” said his mother. “ If you’d only
be less venturesome on the rocks, and not quite so fond of
the S(^a, and would spend just one or two more evenings
with me and Susan, you’d be the best boy — and man ”

“ Oh, that’s all right. I’m safer on the cliff’s face than
you are on this floor — and for the best of reasons ; one has
to take care. And as for the sea — how can one help loving
it? But for sitting at home — after to-night, why, 1 will!”

“ Sha’n’t you be home to-night — this night?” asked the
widow, with gentle appeal.

The tone went to his heart — more deeply than one who
has just become his own master would care to own.

“ I wish I hadn’t now,” said he, “but it’s a week ago
the boys — some of them— bade me to a birth-night supper
in the town; and I can’t put them off now. It would be
ungracious — like insulting them ; and they’d never under-
stand. So this once I must give in. But never mind. I’m
going to make up a good deal. ”

“ Well— God bless you!” said she.

Oliver’s road to Eedruth lay through the town (as it was
called) of Porthtyre ; and his popularity was evident as he
rode down the street on his bay mare. “It was roses,
roses, all the way.” Everybody knew that Oliver Graith
of Zion Farm had come of age that morning; and every-
body— even the envious people and the Pharisees — turned
up sornewhere in the street, at some door or another, to
give him a birthday greeting. Some came because they

8

GOLDEN BELLS,

honestly liked him, or thought so, even as he honestly liked
them, others out of genial good- humor ; others out of curios-
ity ; others because the others came ; others from a sense of
gala in the air; but all came— and the boys and girls
cheered — Oliver Graith was a hero among the boys and
girls. Suddenly somebody was inspired with the "happy
thought of setting the bells going; and all at once the four
bells of Porthtyre began to chime merrily.

Come — What — Come — Can.

At the end of the village Oliver’s hand was clasped by
his special crony and henchman, Tom Polwarth ; the most
zealous of fishers by night — the idlest of blacksmiths by
day.

“ The top of the tide to you, Nol!” said he; “ and a dark
night; and all the fun of the fair. You won’t forget this
night, eh? Lord, we’ll make all the town remember Nol
Graith’s coming of age!”

“ Forget it, Tom? Not I? But here, lad— take these five
guineas to the belfry, and bid the lads there drink jolly
good luck to us all. ’ ’

“That’s you, Nol ”

“ But don’t let ’em get blind drunk before supper-time—
leastwise, not too blind to sing.”

“Trust me,” said Tom. And off rode Oliver, now at
last escaped from his friends. And I am not sure that,
just for once, he did not feel a trifle vain. He dearly liked
to be liked ; and that is not a bad sort of weakness, weak-
ness though it be.

And he had not boasted without thought of turning
over a new leaf this fine November morning — almost too
fine for comfort, seeing that the blueness of the sky was
caused by a wind from the sea so strong that it swept the
air positively clear of cloud. That may seem a peculiar
effect of wind; but then this was altogether a singular
wind, and from a quarter rare on that shore. And it
came, not in gusts, but in a hard, steady sweep, so that
Oliver felt, in the open places, as if he and his mare were
about to be borne bodily to the other side of the road, or
carried sideways across the moor. However, it was not of
meteorology he was thinking, but of his future life, as it
was to be from that day. He regretted nothing — for his
conscience was easy by nature, and nobody had ever done
anything to make it tighter. Methodism had, as will have
been gathered, made but little way in Porthtyre, and the
Church still took things easy. In short, Oliver Graith
was, Avithout knowing it, a good deal of the pagan,
to whom the present moment comprehends everything that
is really real. And so it was as a present picture that he

GOLDEN BELLS.

0

walking his own harvest-fields like his fa-
therr> before him; or, for variety, taking the place of Cap-
tain Vasco on the Lively Peg; and, on the whole, chatting
with his mother and Susan in the chimney-corner over
such adventures as were fit for womankind to hear. It
seemed natural, somehow, that Susan Ambrose should be
always there — she had become a part of the place, which
made it the pleasanter to come home. As for the town,
one thing was certain— nobody should starve. Every good
fellow who lost a boat, or broke a net, or got into trouble
with his majesty’s revenue, should come, as a matter of
course, to Zion Farm. And of eating, drinking, and making
merry, there should be no end.

“ Hang it, old lady, what’s the good of keeping money
to one’s self ?” young Oliver asked of his mare, in a tone
that would have made old Oliver turn in his grave.

Arrived at Eedruth, he put up his mare, glad to be out
of her battle with the wind, emptied a horn of ale, and
went to the bank without delay. It was not market-day,
nor was any mining business going on : so that the street,
often busier than many a bigger plf^ce, and throwing about
sums that would startle a bourse — at least when tin W(xs
tin — was quiet, and Oliver did not meet a face he knew.
It was not till he reached Ambrose’s bank that he felt as
if there were something queerer tha^i mere wind in the
air.

Though it was well on in the forenoon, jhe shutters were
up and the door was closed.

As he stood staring up and down, speculating what this
eccentricity should mean, he heard a harsh voice say, from
somewhere near his ribs :

“ Ah— you may look at that bank, young man!”

“I suppose I may, old gentleman,” said Oliver, looking
down at the queerest figure he had ever seen. The old
gentleman in question was a short, almost dwarfish, nearly
coffee- colored creature, with prodigiously thick shoulders
that stooped forward till they were nearly close together,
a bush of grizzled hair, a thick, perfectly straight iiose,
glowing eyes of dull black, and— what was rare in those
days— a full black beard. The shabbiness of his clothes
was extreme, and their cut was something outlandish, so
that the grease-stains and the ill-matched patches were the
more prominently displayed. The eyebrows were bushy
and overhanging ; so that, altogether, with hair, eyebrows,
beard, and coffee-colored skin, the two eyes glowing out of
all this darkness looked strange indeed. Glancing at the
hands, Oliver saw that, shaped like a woman’s, they were
a )d deal darker than nature had made them.

Lver, as a traveler in Spain, had seen a good many out-

10

GOLDEN BELLS.

landish and picturesque specimens of humanity — the Con-
trabandis, etc., the Zincalo, the Matador, and so forth;
and he fancied at first that the creature who had accosted
him in Eedruth must be some Jew of the baser sort strayed
from San Sebastian. But the same experience told him
that the stranger was no Jew, in spite of the beard. He
had not a Hebrew feature; and the coloring was much too
dark, besides. Then the voice was harsh and rugged, and
distinctively Gentile, even to the least experienced ear.
Finally, in his Spanish experiences, Oliver had never met
an uncourteous Jew, while this man was rough, almost
combative, in his manner of accosting a complete stranger.
In those days, a Jew scarce dared to hold up his head be-
fore a Gentile ; this man held up his as high as he could—
very nearly five feet one, his hat included.

“ A great many people were looking at that bank yester-
day. A very great many indeed. I was looking at it —
yes, by St. Mesrop, even I. ’ ’

Oliver had never heard of the saint ; but it settled the
matter. The old gentleman could be no Jew.

“Is anything ”

“ Worth looking at, young man? Yes, I am worth look-
ing at: the only man in Eedruth who has lost not one
penny by Lancelot Ambrose; unless the other is you.”

Oliver had not a glimmer of the truth, and began to
fancy the old gentleman might be some sort of an oddity,
or innocent ; there was always one, in those days, in every
town. Now, nobody dares to be odd, save for advertise-
ment ; and as for innocence — well, bless our souls.

“ Oh, no fear of that,” said he, pulling the bell. As he
did so, he could have sworn that the uncanny creature
gave a ghastly sort of chuckle. But, on looking round,
and down, he saw nothing but the same aggressive gravity.

He pulled the bell again.

“ My good youth,” said the other, “ do not throw good
money after bad by wasting time. We say in my country,
‘Who waits, wins.’ And why do we say, ‘Who waits,
wins?’ We say it because it is not true. And why do
we say what is not true? Because to make other people
wait while we push on. That is how all the wise sayings
are made, and why. If you will push on, find some wise
saying, and go you the other way. ’ ’

“ ‘ Do what you ought?’ ” asked Oliver, remembering
the watch-pocket, with a smile ; for he liked character of
any sort, and was easily amused.

“Then— do what you ought iiotP'' cried the stranger,
with what seemed real passion. “ Lancelot Ambrose has
been one of the wise!”

“There goes for thrice,” said Oliver, lightly, pulling the

GOLDEN BELLS.

11

bell once more— so hard in his growing impatience that the
handle forgot to go back, and a jangle proclaimed a broken
wire. ‘ ' That will wake them ! and while they are waking,
tell me what in the name of mysteriousness you mean?”

“ Even as the bell wire, so the bank,” said the oddity.
“ Broke,” said he.

“ God in heaven !” cried Oliver, turning pale. “ Are you
mad? Do you know what ”

“ What i say? Why not? All things come to an end —
yes; even I.”

“Yes; and precious soon, if you don’t speak out, and
plain.”

“ CalJchous vrah — On my head be it. Yesterday, like a
green bay -tree; to-day, cut down and withered. That is
business : and the more you cut and you wither, the more
you blow and bloom. I hope you have not much in that
bank, young man?”

“ I don’t know — I must see.”

Oliver hurried to the office of Mr. Lambert, whom he
knew to be Mr. Ambrose’s attorney. Mr. Lambert was in,
and received him gravely. It was true — a terrible calam-
ity had befallen. The most trusted man in Eedruth and
all its region had vanished — no mortal knew where. The
attorney was more than sympathetic. He sent for books
and papers, and went, at the cost of a whole afternoon,
into the affairs of Zion Farm.

And the result was — ruin.

Not ruin comparative, but utter and absolute, beyond
the possibility of the most desperate struggle to redeem.
By elaborate and complicated processes, with difficulty un-
raveled, which must be left to experts in the scientific
conveyancing of eighty years ago, Zion Farm had been
mortgaged many times, and finally subjected to foreclos-
ure, over the head of its owner, who had been generously
allowed only a fraction of what had been raised, in order
to prevent inconvenient inquiries. Oliver had not, for
three months, been so much as the legal owner of what he
believed to be his own freehold, which truly belonged to
some foreign capitalist, Nicephorus Bedrosian by name—
and a strange one. As for that unlimited balance in the
bank, it had gone where other balances had gone ; and as
for the nine -tenths of the Lively Peg — —

“It was yesterday,” said Mr. Lambert, “ that Lancelot
Ambrose left Eedruth; and yesterday also that ”

“ Captain Vasco sailed from Porthtyre!” groaned Oliver.

The attorney was silent. It is not to be supposed that
he was unaware of the traffic in which the Lively Peg, of
Porthtyre, Captain Vasco, chief owner, Oliver Graith, was
engaged. But it was no time to deliver a homily on the

12

GOLDEN BELLS,

text of rendering to Caesar; and, besides, what was the
crime of cheating the king to robbing widows and orphans,
who, after ’all, enabled Lawyer Lambert himself to come
by better liquor at a cheaper rate than if the letter of the
law had been observed?

There was no use in the process of going through the
whole miserable business all over again ; but the attorney
carried his good-nature even so far as that, and though
without the hope of a fee. And the oftener they went
through the business, the clearer it became. Lancelot
Ambrose had left his wards without either a penny or the
means of making one. And he had so timed the culmina-
tion of his plans in flight that he might just miss the day
of reckoning when Oliver became twenty -one.

If only the Lively Peg had been left — then, at any rate,
he would not have been left without a breadwinner. Tears
came into his eyes for the cutter that he had come to love
with the sort of human love that a ship inspires.

“It IS a bad business, Mr. Graith,” said the attorney,
“ and though you’re not the only victim, you’re the heav-
iest. On the other hand, you’re the youngest — and the
strongest, to look at you, as well.”

“Yes; I’m pretty strong,” said the poor lad, turning
away with the suspicion of a choke in his voice ; for, though
fortune of course is dross, and all that sort of thing, still
it was hard to have to spend one’s one- and-twentieth birth-
day in a general shipwreck of one’s cargo, dross though it
be. The wind had fallen when Oliver turned his mare’s
willing head home ; but the weather had ceased to be of
any concern. I doubt if, at the moment, he was so much
overcome by the sense of ruin— which nobody can truly
realize until it has actually been felt— as by a terrible sense
of humiliation and shame. In what triumph he had rid-
den out that morning— how would he return?

Then his mother. She was not the latest in his thoughts
because she came late in mention. Of course he would be
able to take life by the throat with his strong hands, and
compel Fortune to disgorge somehow — if the worst came
to the worst, or rather not the worst, he could get employ-
ment like Captain Vasco; nobody can feel ruined at sea.
But he knew how his mother clung to the farm, and to the
familiar fireside ; or, at any rate, he partly knew.

Outward bound, the mare had not been able to go quick
enough for him ; homeward bound, she trotted too fast by
far. When he came in sight of Porthtyre steeple he
shifted his course, so as to reach Zion farm without meet-
ing anybody by the way. His notion was to get to the
place quietly, stable the mare, and then consider the whole
position over a solitary pipe before bringing the bad news

GOLDEN BELLS.

13

to the folks at home. But when in the midst of the cart-
track that served for an approach, he found himself con-
fronted with the one person to whom he had not given a
single thought— Susan Ambrose ; the daughter of the man
who had robbed them of their all.

The girl was standing in the track, shading her eyes
with her hand, as if watching for his coming. He thought
of leaping his mare into the paddock, and of escaping her
by riding round to the yard the back way. But her eyes
were too quick for this maneuver, and she came up run-
ning.

Ah — you are here !” she exclaimed, hurriedly. “ Come
up to the house, quick— there are people who have come to
turn us out into the fields ; and the lads are up from Porth-
tyre — and ’ ’

" She was bewildered, trembling, and pale. What had
happened now?

“ Men to turn you into the fields? What do you mean?”

‘‘Yes; and Tom Polwarth and the rest have got wind,
and Thank God you’ve come in time!”

Without a word he touched his mare and galloped into
the yard, leaving Susan to follow. A strange scene met
his eyes. The yard was thronged with the whole able-
bodied youth of 'Porthtyre — all who held Oliver Graith for
their king and captain. And a formidable muster they
made, with their array of weapons; old matchlocks, a
musket or two, cutlasses and dirks, and other tools, such
as fishermen and farm-hands can scarce require in the way
of honest trade. Some were talking excitedly; but for the
most part there was a grim and silent expectancy, which
means mischief in a crowd.

When, however, Oliver rode into the midst, a shout of
welcome went up, with a dash of fierceness in it, that made
the air ring again, and started the gulls.

” What is it, my lads?” he asked, while Susan came up
to the mare’s head and fondled her nose. “Not the pre-
ventives— hey?”

By way of answer, Tom Polwarth, the blacksmith, came
forward from the house-door, his right hand holding a
clubbed musket, and his left hand holding a human head
tight to his ribs, the body and limbs trailing behind.

“ What shall we do with him, Nol Graith?” asked Tom;
“ over the cliff, or only into the pond?”

“We’ll see about that in a minute,” said Oliver, with
faint heart, but in royal style. “ First of all, let him go
before you’ve clean throttled him. Now, my man, who
are you? And what do you want here? Let the fellow
speak, Tom; fair play’s a jewel. Comt? — out with it, man.
Don’t look so scared.”

14 GOLDEN BELLS.

“ Scared? No— but half strangled,” pulfed the prisoner,
gasping from the grasp of Tom. “ Are you Oliver Graith,
of Zion Farm, parish of Porthtyre? Very good. Then
I’m the law.”

“Ay — I thought tou was uglier than common,” growled
Tom. “Only, I’d ha’ thought the law could have kept a
better coat on his back, if all’s true I’ve heard.” And it
must be owned that the fellow was but ill-fitted, either in
looks or in garb, to represent the majesty, beauty, and
loveliness of Law. Tom’s growl was answered with a howl
from Oliver’s friends.

“And ” began Oliver, his tongue getting tight in his

throat ; for he began to have a suspicion, though not of
all.

“And,” said the law, “I take you, mister, and this
young woman here, to bear witness how I’ve been set upon
by force of arms, with divers guns, swords, pikes, staves,
and other engines of war, and assaulted, battered, maimed,
and otherwise interfered with in the execution of my
duty, against the peace of his majesty King George, his
crown and dignity. And you’ll bear witness, and this
here young woman too, I don’t depart but at the peril of
my life; and nobody can’t do more. P’raps when the
sojers come, your mouths ’ll grin ’tother side; and you
best know if beside a writ you’d like a search warrant as
well. There’s a good bit of talk, St. Agnes way, about the
Lively Peg— and lively she do seem. ’ ’

“ A writ?” asked Oliver. “Hand it here. And, Tom,
don’t let one of the lads lay a finger on the fellow, till I’ve
read it through. I know something more about the law
now than I did last night, ay, or this morning. There, my
lads, I’ve read it through. And what’s more, law for all
it be, I understand. I got my lesson up in Pedruth before
I came home. And this it is : I stand here before you all
without a stick nor a penny ; not the mare under me, nor
the shirt on my back, is my own. I haven’t the right to
lay this crop over this here bailiff’s shoulders; because the
crop’s his master’s, and not mine. He’s come to turn us
out of doors, my mother and all; and, what’s more, he’s
got the right, leastways the law of it, and he can get the
power, and so out we must go. Out this minute ; for we
Graiths aren’t the folk to stay in another man’s house
without a welcome. So don’t you think to do us good by
doing mischief, because you’ll only do us harm, and your-
selves as well. I’m sorry I can’t come to supper, lads;
but — I can’t, you see. But maybe the bailiff here won’t
mind you having a drink of his master’s ale. There — I
can’t make things clear. ’Tis enough we’ve been done out

GOLDEN BELLS.

15

of farm, and cutter, and every stick and stone, by the
damnedest scoundrel that’s biding his time to be hanged.”

Up went a howl of “name!”

“ His name is—”

Lancelot Ambrose, of Kedruth, was on the very tip of
Oliver’s tongue when he chanced to catch sight of Susan
stroking the mare’s nose. Well — what then? She was of
viper’s blood; and what mercy had her father shown to
him. and his that he should show any to her and hers? Let
the name of the infernal scoundrel be published to all the
winds, so that justice might the sooner follow law. So:

‘ ‘ His name is — my aif air 1 ’ ’ said he. ‘ ‘ There ; be off now,
lads; and thank you every one — for many a jolly hour.”

They were as good fellows for all their roughness —
maybe because of it — as anybody not over-squeamish would
care to find. But human nature is human nature; and by
some invariable law, it never shows its better side in a
crowd. Measure a crowd by the value of its meanest
atoms, and your measure will prove true. This crowd
was bound to be muddled, or it would not have been a
crowd, and the sort of eloquence that sways crowds would
be as wasted as it deserves. But through all its inevitable
muddle it felt one thing clearly; and the feeble shout that
went up for Oliver Graith and confound his enemies, who-
ever they were, was a very different thing from the cheer
that would have gone up had a wealthy young farmer
stood upon his rights and have bidden them throw a bailiff
into the horsepond, or — better still — into the sea. Of
course they liked Oliver for himself — but; and but; and
but, the best of fellows are but the best of men. The bail-
iff* straightened himself, conscious of a change of wind.

“Ah, you’re a man of sense, you are,” said he. “And
you needn’t hurry out. You may take a good hour. Why
you’ve waited till you’ve had to be turned out neck and
crop, blessed if I can tell. ’ ’

No doubt all the notices and so forth had come to the
hands of the legal owner, the trustee, and had stopped
there. But legal mysteries and niceties did not weigh upon
people who assumed that law is of its nature capricious,
tyrannical, and absurd, and never looked for justice or
reason in its name. Why, they looked upon even those
divine institutions, the revenue acts, as odious; and why
should the law of ejectment be a whit the better? Oliver
Graith had simply learned from Lawyer Lambert that it is
vain to rebel ; and his soul revolted less against injustice
than against fate as he dismounted and moved toward the
kitchen, bidding the bailiff follow.

Not only were Oliver’s friends and comrades mystified,
but were fairl;y disappointed by his unexpected behavior.

16

GOLDEN BELLS.

Some loafed down the cart-track ; others hung about the
place ; but a critical humor had seized them all. In short,
there was no longer a crowd, but the separate, independent
atoms of which a crowd had for awhile been made.

“ I did always hold,” said one of the elder, “that Nol
Graith was sailing a bit too free. ’ ’

“ And carried his head another good bit too high.”

“But not ducking the preventive — ’tis that beats me;
and giving in without a word.”

“ ’Twasn’t a preventive; ’twas a bum; so ’tis queerer
still.”

“ Ah — if old Nol had seen this day!”

“He’d never have seen it. What’s to be done about
supper now?”

What indeed? Yet, somehow, the givers of the feast and
the guests alike gravitated to the tavern in twos and
threes ; and the question somehow answered itself without
any trouble of theirs. And if by the end of the feast there
was one who remembered the original cause of it, then is
popularity in Forth tyre singularly different from that phe-
nomenon elsewhere.

-X- 5^ * * * * *

“ How am I to tell — her ?”

It was Oliver who was speaking to Susan — the daughter
of the villain to whom he owed his ruin. Nor had it ever
occurred to him to ask her counsel before.

The girl positively flushed, the notion of his consulting
her seemed so new and strange. “ Tell me first,” said she,
quietly — she had always been mouselike in her ways.

“You’ve heard. Every word I’ve said outside is true.
I heard in Eedruth that we were ruined ”

“ From father?”

What should he say? To tell her the whole truth would
seem like striking her— a girl. She would have to know
all, of course, at last; but he could not bring himself to
deal the blow — there had been enough misery for one day.

‘ ‘ That we are ruined ; your father and all. He has had
to leave the country, Sue. And so shall I. ’ ’

He had to wipe his forehead after that; it was the near-
est approach to a lie he had ever made— and he could not
have told himself why he had taken the trouble to sail so
near.

“ Oliver!”

“Yes. I suppose it’s nobody’s fault — unless it’s mine.
I ought to have looked after things; but I thought — well,
never mind what I thought. But about mother. Sue?”

“You — you are that father has lost everything ^of

his own, as well as yours?”

He looked down into her anxious and upturned face ; and

GOLDEN BELLS.

17

the girl, almost for the first moment, became to him some-
thing a little more than — a pleasant nobody. He had not
been used to think of anybody but himself; and how should
he, as the only man about the place, whose every least ca-
price had been a law to his whole world? But he felt at
this moment as if to tell Susan the whole truth would be to
strike the cruelest and most cowardly of blows.

“ Quite sure,” said he.

“Then — thank God for that!” said Susan, with a sigh
that seemed more of relief than of sorrow. “ You’re mis-
taken if you think your mother will think about ruin for
herself; she’ll be feeling it for you, Oliver, and if you put
a brave face and a stout heart on it, why then she’ll bear
anything rather than pain you by complaint or sor-
row ’ ’

“ How can you tell that?” he asked, opening his eyes.

“Because I can,” she answered, with the only logic
worth a straw. “ It’s just what I should feel; and so will
she.”

Oliver left her, and paced the floor. It would have been
all very well to talk to him about stout hearts and brave
faces had he stood alone ; and if only the Lively Peg had
been left him. That would have been some set-off against
even such a blow as his loss of faith in mankind — a mere
bagatelle in middle age, but a crushing calamity at twenty-
one. Without preparation, without anything to look to
for daily bread but his idle and wasteful hands, she would
have to turn out of her home in an hour ; she would not
have even a roof to cover her. Why had he been so tender
of the feelings of a girl who had taken the announcement
of ruin as quietly as if he had told her that a chimney-pot
had blown down?— of the daughter of his enemy? He was
almost angry with himself for his misplaced mercy — he
should have said, “See what we owe to you and yours.”
Well — she would have to know in time, when her father
sent for her to help live on the proceeds of the ruin of Zion
Farm. And for the future — nay, for the present, rather?
He would have to work; but how could he come down
from his throne and his pedestal to hold a plow on another
man’s farm, or an oar in another man’s boat, and be a
servant where he had ruled?”

A good part of the hour’s law must have passed while,
not heeding that Susan was no longer in the kitchen, he
paced up and down, finding the necessity of breaking the
news to his mother more and more impossible at every
turn. At length he felt that he would sooner have faced
the wildest Atlantic storm between San Sebastian and
Porthtyre.

However, it must be faced at last. He made a plunge

18

GOLDEN BELLS.

for the door ; but before he reached it he came face to face
with the widow, with Susan’s arm round her.

“ God bless you, my own boy !” cried Mrs. Graith, throw-
ing her arms round his neck. “Don’t you be afraid — for
me!”

It was over. Susan had acted while he was despairing —
and so acted as to make her own prediction come true.
What come to the girl to make him, even Oliver Graith, feel
shamed? Tears, and no selfish ones, came to his eyes.

“Mother,” he said, in a tone that told of his having
come to manhood in fact, as well as in years, “if it were
not for you I would 7iot be afraid. But you will have to
live poorly ; you will have to suffer for my waste and my
folly ”

“Hush!” said she. “What do I mind, so long as we
live and work together? Ah, it isn’t the worst of things,
being poor.”

“ But it is a bad thing,” said Susan, in her quiet way,

‘ ‘ all the same. We mustn’t tie Oliver to our apron strings.
What could he do here, but become — what most of them
are? Yes; /know what they call honest work in Port h-
tyre — and all the end of it worse ruin than ours is this day.
Mrs. Graith, we must make up our minds of it ; he is a
man; and he must go.”

Was she reading his secret heart? He had not owned it,
even to himself; but the prospect of slaving under his
former companions at Porthtyre had been all this while
dragging at his spirit ; and now, as Susan had put it, duty
became one with desire.

“ But— but what could you do?” he asked. “ No; I must
not leave mother alone. ’ ’

“ I am quite right, Mrs. Graith,” said Susan. “ A man
must be a man. And there is only one way. If I were a
man, nothing should hinder me. As for us, we can earn
our own bread — women don’t want much by themselves —
without thinking about pride, till Oliver comes home
again; or makes a home elsewhere. And— Oliver, your
mother will not be alone. Fault or no fault, it is through
us you have suffered; and here I stay to help, till I’m
wanted no more.”

Oliver looked at the girl in increasing amaze. “But
when your father ” he began.

“Wants me? Oh, he won’t. He won’t ask me to do
what— what I couldn’t do. There are plenty of things to
be done— mending nets, teaching the children— I can do
that; sewing; twenty things. Why, two lone women
could save; but with a man, whatever his earnings, they’d
starve together. And so— good-bye, Oliver ; you are going,-

GOLDEN BELLS. 19

so don’t lose time. The longer we put ofl parting, only the
harder ’twill be.”

‘‘And, by Old Nick, she’s right I” cried Tom Polwarth,
who had come in during these last words, the only recreant
from the claims of supper in all Porthtyre, “I thought I’d
come up to see if I could be of a bit of service to Miss Su —
to Mrs. Graith and all, if so it might be; and there’s the
smithy can give them a roof till we light on another. I
sha’n’t be in the way— and ”

“And you’re a good fellow, Tom!” said Oliver, holding
out his hand. “ I didn’t look to find a man to stand by
one at a pinch again. Here, I’ve got two guineas left; and
the mare. Take ’em, and do the best with ’em for the
women ; the mare ought to fetch a goodish few guineas in
Eedruth— so ’ ’

“Good-bye,” said Susan, holding out her hand. She
spoke very gently ; but it was none the less a command.
And such Vas its magic that not till the parting embrace
was over, and the heir had gone forth upon his wandering,
did the widow break inta the sobs that might have made
him too weak to go, or at least have sent him with a faint
heart away.

CHANGE THE SECOND.

OP MOON.

Few will doubt the wisdom of Susan Ambrose ; and none
her courage. And not many, I think, will wonder whence
the courage and the wisdom came. In short, the sudden
crisis in the life at Zion Farm had told her that there had
befallen her the worst misfortune, save one, that can befall
a girl — that her heart has gone into the keeping of one who
is both little vrorthy of it and by whom it is unprized.
There were, no doubt, excuses. A man does not have
pluck, dash, and the beauty of the athlete for nothing ; or
the qualities that make him a prince among his fellows ;
or the genial good-humor and the generous spirit that give
these things their charm. Nor — 1 must own it — is the best
of women ill-disposed to a ready-made hero of this sort
solely by reason of his not being a paragon of the virtues,
There had been talk, half-envious, half-admiring, of adr
ventures in Spain, which had found its way to Zion Farm,
and had possessed for any girl who led so quiet a life all
the piquancy of danger and mystery, with just that flavor
of masterful wickedness which is the most piquant of all —
to geese ; and what girl worth her salt is not a bit of a
goose about such things?

In short, she mistook a man’s weakness for strength, as

20 GOLDEN BELLS.

was natural ; and her own strength for weakness — as was
more natural stilL

But when came the crash, and when, despite Oliver’s as-
surance, she suspected that things were even more wrong
than they seemed, her whole heart opened, and love,
hitherto unsuspected, showed her that she cared for Oliver
Graith, not because of his weaknesses, but — recognizing
them— in spite of them. She saw clearly what he only
dimly suspected — that such life as was henceforth open to
him at Porthtyre meant real ruin to him, body, heart,
mind, and soul. The prince of good fellows can never de-
scend—except to the bottom. Drink and recklessness and
evil company would claim their own. She saw in her
hero the possible wrecker — brigand — pirate ; love made her
clear-sighted to every germ of a fault ; and she shuddered.
Go he must, into a larger life, where adventure might be
noble, even though she should see his face no more. Go —
and that without delay ; even without a plan.

* ^ *

Tom Polwarth had come in the' nick of time to let Oliver
depart with the confidence that, so far as immediate de-
tails went, the women were left in loyal hands; and so
grateful was she to the scapegrace as to raise fluttering
hopes under his leather apron that she had less than no
business to raise. The last thing Oliver saw before quitting
the homestead was a smile from the window-pane that he
could not answer save with a smile, and which, when it
vanished, left him with a sense that there had been some •
thing in his life unrealized till it was gone. Well — it was
too late to think of such things now. What was the loss
of a girl’s smile, however bright, to that of his cutter and
his mare?

He crossed the yard, now empty of life, passed through
the gate, and down the cart road, stopping at the bend to
throw a last look back at the old home, whence lie was is-
suing a vagabond without an aim. Would he ever see it
again? — and how? But his faculty for sentiment, if indeed
he had any, had never been properly cultivated, and the
present moment was quite big enough to fill his mind — to
overfill it, rather. To begin with — which way was he
going, when he got to the end of the wagon road?

The wisdom of yielding to sudden impulse appeared
scarcely to manifest when reduced to action. Neverthe-
less, the plunge had been taken ; nor, save for the briefest
of instants, did Oliver dream of returning. He seated
himself on the edge of a stone trough and took stock of
his qualifications for attacking Fortune in her citadel—
wherever that may be.

Firstly, then . he had youth, strength, fairly good looks,

GOLDEN BELLS,

21

a capacity for good spirits (a trifle damped just now, and
the worse for wear), an excellent coat, a pair of riding-
boots as good as new, and the knowledge of how to sail a
cutter in any wind or weather a^ well as Captain Vasco.

Per contra— not a penny.

Balance — who knows?

Well — in one way a balance had to be struck; he must
go one way or another. There, at the bottom of the hill,
to the west, were dotted the lights of Porthtyre. That was
one way. To the south swelled the moors; broad and
heaving to the north spread the sea. The natural way to
somewhere would be Porthtyre, whence he could reach Red-
ruth, or across the moors to Falmouth, which for a seafar-
ing man would be better still.

However, as luck would have it, at that moment there
rose from among the twinkling lights of Porthtyre a jolly
chorus, one in which he had joined a hundred times. So
the lads were celebrating his coming of age after all ! He
was no cjmic, despite the blow his faith in human nature
had received that day ; but it did strike the young fellow
as a trifle out of season that they should be keeping in that
sort of style the ejection of the heir from house and land.
They, rousing the night with toast and chorus — he, sitting
out in the cold.

That chorus decided him. He cut a staff from the thorn
at the entrance of the homestead, cocked his hat, and strode
down the hill with a swing.

So planned, so done. As he passed the lighted window
of the tavern, the lads were startled during the thirteenth
verse of somebody’s song by a shower of gravel on the win-
dow-pane and as jolly a whistle as ever piped down care,
or made one’s friends sing small. And thus he marched
out with all the honors of war.

His plan, so far as he had one, was thence to clear
Porthtyre by going down the little harbor, taking the
cliff path to the west, and, when he reached a certain up-
land track, to strike for Falmouth across the moor. There
was nobody about on the quay; and he could not help
pausing, for he had no engagements, and had plenty of
time. Having let off his ill-humor — not that most people
would have called it such— in that song- burst of which he
still felt not a little proud, he took a seat on a belaying-
post, and put his hand into his coat pocket for his tinder-
box and tobacco. To his bewilderment, the packet ho
drew out proved to be a by no means inconsiderable parcel
of bread and cold beef, in layers far less elegant than sub-
stantial.

“What’s the meaning of this?” wondered he. “Beef
doesn’t grow in one’s coat-tail of itself,” ho pondered,

22

GOLDEN BELLS.

taking a double bite of bread and meat. “And they
haven’t even forgotten the mustard ! It’s mighty queer.
This’ll be a useful coat for a traveler, if that’s going to be
its way. It is mighty queer; but it’s mighty good, and—
yes, and so’s she.”

For who else could have played such a parting trick but
one— what other fingers could have so deftly made free
with a man’s own. coat tail without his being aware, and
have remembered so swiftly and so seasonably that man
has other organs than a heart and a brain? It is sad, nay,
it is ignominious, to record that Susan Ambrose made a
more lively impression upon the heart itself of Oliver
Graith by means of that beef than she had done in three
years. And yet w'hy ignominious, after all ? There are a
thousand roads to the heart, and there may be as much
soul in a sandwich as in a song.

But can a man be hungry in the very moment of losing
house, land; money, friends, home, faith, fortune? Can he
not— that’s all! Oliver Graith was ; and, knowing no bet-
ter, ate and was not ashamed. The only fault alDout the
beef was that there was no more.

There was enough, however, to renew his vigor, and he
rose to proceed. Suddenly, however, his ears caught the
measured beat of approaching oars.

At first he listened out of curiosity; then with a differ-
ent sort of interest. Every fisherman in the place was
making a night of it ashore ; and then the regular rhythm
of the oars and the absence of voices did not belong to the
style of Porthtyre, where everything was done roughly,
and— barring very special occasions — with a good deal of
noise. A preventive boat, from St. Winnock’s? Hardly
likely ; and if it were, Oliver thought of the Lively Peg,
and almost laughed to himself to think that the coastguard
had come a very decided da^^ after the fair.

Presently the boat glided into the harbor, and ground
against the rough landing-steps, amid shipping of oars.
An order or two was given in a boyish voice, and then some
half-dozen sailors came rolling up upon the quay, followed
by a slender lad in uniform.

Oliver lighted his pipe and looked on, while the sailors
stood chattering in a low voice at the head of the steps, and
the young gentleman strutted up and down. At length the
latter, changing his course a little, nearly stumbled over
the long legs that Oliver was stretching comfortably.

‘ ‘ A lively sort of a port this, mate, ’ ’ piped the youngster,
in a voice that was now a shrill falsetto and now a deep
growl, after the painful manner of sixteen, and looking
round.

GOLDEN BELLS.

23

“Pretty well, youngster, for that,” said Oliver. “No-
body’s bound to come that doesn’t please.”

“ The fishing- boats out, eh?”

“ What— do you want to buy?”

“ Come, none of your sauce to a king’s officer. I sup-
pose a landsman must be excused ; but none of that again.
Blest if I ever saw a port like this, with nothing but a long-
legged land- lubber all round. Stand up, when you speak
to a gentleman. What are you doing here?”

“Smoking a pipe, youngster. What are you? Question
for question, as they say in Spain.”

‘ ‘ Oho ? You’ ve been in Spain ? Merchantman, or man-of-
war?”

“Well — for cheek, commend me to a face that’s never
been shaved, as the Spaniard says again.”

The lad looked him over from his hat to his riding-boots,
and nodded approvingly.

“You’ve not the rig of Jack Tar,” said he. “Why, I
don’t believe you could box the compass — let alone keep

your legs in half a gale ; and by ’ ’ (not all the young

gentleman's vocabulary merits type), “it was a whole one
we had to-day. ’ ’

An idea came to Oliver, who already began to foresee
breakfast-time.

“ Then here’s a wager, youngster. An even half -guinea
I beat you by six points— done?”

“Done. And you begin. Here, Withers, you’ve heard
the bet. When the first of us gets to north again, sing
out ‘ Hold!’ as sharp as ”

“Wait a bit, though,” said Oliver, flushing. “No. It
won’t do.”

“ You cry off?” But isn’t that crying forfeit, eh?”

“You see, my lad, I might lose.”

“And you don’t like paying? Quite right. Stick to
that, and you’ll do,” said the officer, with a sneer.

“I wouldn’t mind the paying,” said Oliver, “but I
should mind having nothing to pay.”

‘ ‘ Oho ! That’s another pair of pumps. I see now. Look
here, then— I lay a whole guinea to — to a cruise on his
majesty’s frigate Seamew. Is that done?”

Oliver was in no mood to refuse a wager — indeed, he
would have been in very different plight had he ever been
in such a mood.

“ Done 1” said he.

“You’ll begin, and I’ll time,” said the midshipman, tak-
ing out his watch. “ One — two — three 1”

From north to north Oliver went like a flash of light-
ning.

Handing over the watch, the midshipman went from

GOLDEN BELLS.

U

north to north like another. But Oliver had won, not by
six points, but by nine.

“Here’s the guinea, mate,” said the officer, tossing the
coin to Oliver. “ And now for the cruise. ”

He whistled, and forthwith Oliver found both his arms
pinioned behind him,

“ What the devil is this?” he cried. “ Haven’t I won?”

The officer laughed. “So well that we can’t afford to
lose' the other chance — of seeing how you can stand in a
gale. The Seamew wants you— and you spend the guinea
when you’re next ashore.”

Oliver saw the trick, and struggled to get free. But
even his strength was not equal to freeing his pinioned
arms, and his skill in wrestling was wasted behind him.
True, he could still deal formidable kicks with his heavy
riding-boots— unluckily without spurs — but at another
whistle from the midshipman a couple more sailors hurried
up the steps from the boat, and, lifting up his legs, boots
and all, carried him down, and pitched him into the boat
like so much lumber.

It was a good night’s work for the Seamew, whom
fortune had conspicuously favored. Not only had her
boat’s crew captured the smartest and gallantest sailor in
Porthtyre, but had done so without an attempt at a rescue
or the least risk of inquiry. They hurried him off so that
his vigorous shout might not alarm the town ; but there
was no occasion. His coming of age was being celebrated
far too jovially for a ravished stentor to be heard.

It might be thought that a worse stroke of luck might
have befallen a penniless man. But Oliver Graith, though
as capable as most men of taking things as they came, was
by no means of that opinion. He had learned, in his own
exceedingly free voyages, quite enough of maritime affairs
to have the gravest possible objection to entering the
service of the king. He was an Englishman, and it was
war-time. But Porthtyre was a good deal out of England,
and a very great deal outside war. Its people were en-
gaged, for that matter, in a pretty chronic war of their
own, and even from their cradles upward, had learned to
look upon King George as the abstract idea of an arch-
coast-guardsman, to whom it was the first duty of man to
pay no duty, but quite the other way. Nay, I will not
altogether undertake to say, wild as the notion may sound
to entirely contemporary readers, that there was not linger-
ing even still on that corner of the coast a vague, tradi-
tional notion, handed down for two full generations, that _
some sort of rightful sovereignty belonged to the name of
Charles or James. Memories, having fewer demands on
them, ran longer in those days. However, be this as it

GOLDEN BELLS.

25

may, hate of the foreigner, and especially of the French-
man, could not well run high in a parish where French-
man, Spaniard, Basque, and Portuguese were fellow-
mariners — partners in profit, loss, and peril. Had not
Oliver’s best and most adventurous hours been spent
abroad? Had not the Lively Peg of Porthtyre been com-
manded by a Basque, who had carried worse contraband
than French brandy? And, for a final reason, it was one
thing to risk life and limb in the pursuit of gull’s eggs and
true glory — quite another to lose them at the bidding of an
impudent whipper-snapper without being asked so much
as by your leave. Yes — he knew enough of the sea to
realize the life of a king’s sailor — an off chance of prize
money, balanced by a very large chance of two wooden
legs, two hooks for arms, an occasional flogging, and about
as much liberty as a galley slave.

So, even while he could not help smiling at the boy’s
sharp practice, he still groaned in spirit over the fate that
had befallen him at the very threshold of the world.

And now, as he sat on a thwart amidships, well guarded
on either side lest he should attempt mischief, as pressed
men in their despair had been known to do, he saw the fa-
miliar black-gray cliffs grow grayer and grayer as the
boat pulled into the swell left by that morning’s wonder-
ful wind. He could not help admiring the machine-like
action of the oars ; the silence ; the discipline. But, at the
same time, these things, though in the open air of the sea,
weighed upon him as with the atmosphere of a jail. What
was the name of his future prison? Of course — the Sea-
mew. He turned his head to catch sight of it, when an-
other singular event occurred in the altogether singular *
weather-chronicle of that day.

As I have mentioned, every breath of wind had fallen ;
the heaving of the sea was nothing more than an act of
memory. And now a whitish film seemed to be falling
between the boat and the horizon, as if a veil of the very
finest and most transparent gauze were being let down
from the sky. The film was here closer, there thinner.
But presently another veil appeared to be let down in front
of the first, and then a third before the second. And thus,
more swiftly than pen can move, the boat of the Seamew
found itself in as fine a specimen of a white sea-fog as
over was seen.

The phenornenon was not new to a channel sailor. But
even Oliver, in all his five years’ experience of the most
excitingly capricious weather, had never encountered a
fog of such absolute density. He could not even see the
forms of the sailors who sat so close as to press against
him on either side ; there was nothing but one wet white-

26 GOLDEN BELLS.

ness, as soft as cream and as opaque as a wall, blocking up
his very eyeballs.

The midshipman rapped out three great oaths worthy
of an admiral, and screamed an order to cease rowing and
lie to.

“How long do these — confounded — fogs of yours last?”
cried he.

“They vary,” said Oliver. “Sometimes one minute,
sometimes ten ”

“ Minutes?”

“No; hours.”

“ And this one?”

“Unless there’s a breeze at sunrise — why, I should say
nigher the ten hours.”

“You know your own— hanged— coast, I suppose? What
is to be done?”

“ Nothing in a dead swell, but lie by.”

‘ ‘ That’s lively. Halloa ! What’s that ’ ’

“That” was the very slightest of splashes, as if some
heavy body had suddenly been dropped over the boat’s
side. But what it was only Oliver Graith could tell. No
sooner had the fog crept fairly round and embraced the
boat in its white arms than he "pulled off his boots — while
answering the officer his Sunday coat had followed. Then,
gliding from between his guards, who could not have seen
their own hands at the distance of an inch, he stood up-
right on the thwart, and made a flying leap clean into the
sea on the landward side, without even striking an oar as
he plunged.

But it was no case of suicide: he knew that the incom-
ing tide would favor him, and through tlie white darkness
he made for the shore as well as the fog allowed, economiz-
ing his strength, and trusting less to himself than to the
action of the under- swell.

So far as he could reckon he stood a fair chance, fortune
favoring, of striking the entrance of the harbor. But, as
time went on, he began to feel an uncomfortable conscious-
ness either' that he had made an error in his reckoning, or
that the tide was not doing its duty. It was useless to
strain his eyes, so he strained his ears. But there was not
a sound such as might come from the beat of waves on a
hard shore. All was dead, and he was deaf and blind.

Could he have so far mistaken as to be making for the
open sea?

The possibility, nay, the likelihood, of such an error gave
him a turn. The likelihood : for the slightest divergence
from a straight course would increase by a familiar mathe-
jnatical law, and the bee-line, once lost, could never be re-

GOLDEN BELLS,

27

gained. Was it worth while to swim so much as another
stroke when in such plight as he?

It was a plight indeed.

He was virtually in the midst of a boundless ocean, de-
prived of ears and eyes, without even air around him or
sky. above him. Not only was his whole past life blotted
out, with all its pleasures and all its follies, but the whole
universe — past, present, and future; earth, air, sky, and
sea. He was absolutely alone; unless, indeed, Death were
his comrade.

“ Well,” thought he, “ one might come to a worse end.
Though, all the same, it’s soon. ‘Make the best of it,’
said she. What is the best? I’d do it if I knew. Come
what come can.”

For he was growing cramped and cold, and his thoughts
began to jingle. The sea was ceasing to feel wet or chill;
it was as if a blanket were being wrapped round his limbs,
and each wave felt strangely like a pillow. He was wear-
ing out ; and the limbs so needed rest, and the brain sleep,
that there was even a luxurious fascination in the fancy of
letting himself sink and take a good long sleep — once for
all. Would it not be better, after all, than a hand-to-hand
battle with fortune that would endure, may be, for fifty
years to come? Nobody would miss him. Trust was
vanity, friendship folly; his mother would be cared for
when Susan married Tom. Sleep and rest, rest and sleep;
that was the great thing for one who had proved the
world’s hollowness at twenty -one. Who would really care
if he never turned up again? It is true that she had not
let him go without beef

It was a queer thought to be a man’s last. But it was
Oliver Graith’s, and truth against the world.

4: ^

Is there any sleep, even the last, from which one does
not wake in time?

When Oliver Graith woke he doubted whether he had
been dreaming or whether he was in a dream still. And
no wonder he doubted, for he woke beneath the light of
the moon. The ghostly sea -mist had returned to ghost-
land; the full moon was not sailing among her clouds,
but was shining, silvern and steadfast, from a clear and
open sky.

The far-off sea, at its remotest ebb, was striking with
heavy thuds upon the outskirts of the sand.

Oliver rolled round on his face and lifted himself on his
elbows. It took him a good ten minutes to realize that he
was alive, and not at the bottom of the sea.

He looked round at the moon, the distant line of glist-

28 GOLDEN BELLS,

ening foam, and the waving rushes— now mysteriously
gray.

“ Hanno Sands!” cried he.

Does the reader remember, or does he not remember,
that this story began, yet did not begin, on the most deso-
late spot that Nature ever made her very own— the legend -
dary sands that lay to the east of Porthtyre? If he forgets,
let him turn to the first page ; if, by good hap, he remem-
bers, let him read on — always remembering the ways of
the wind. Oliver knew the sands nearly as well as the
cliffs nearer home, trackless though they were. Many a
cache had he helped to make there, on just such another
night, for the imports brought by Peg the Livelj^ from south-
ern France or northern Spain. But never until now had
their desolation struck him with awe. It was as if he
had escaped from death, the land of ghosts, into a life
where not even so much company as that of ghosts is to be
found.

So, bare- footed, and well-nigh bare-backed, a very vaga-
bond of vagabonds, he arose. By hugging the wet sand he
could regain Porthtyre, but pride forbade. By crossing
the moonlit sands he could at least avoid Porthtyre, and
so on this he resolved.

Often as Oliver Graith had crossed Hanno Sands at night
he had never before done so entirely alone, and there is al-
ways something in moonlight which evokes whatever
superstition a man is capable of feeling. Foi the moon is
still Astarte, Queen of Fancies and Dreams — which, if not
the whole world, constitute its larger portion. And
fancies enough she inspired to-night in one who, west-
country sailor as he was, was nevertheless healthily free
from every taint of poetry, beyond the silver she threw
over waste — silver gleaming in the sand and sparkling on
the reeds.

For example, it seemed to him that, on whatever part of
the waste he might be, the silver billows had changed
their form. He knew that the watercourse must be be-
tween him and Porthtyre, and his object was, finding
it, to follow it up and down the dunes till the desert be-
came the open moor. But he* had rambled a good hour to-
ward the star he chose to steer by, and the watercourse
remained invisible still. Making: every allowance for the
slowness and difficulty of of tramping over heavy sandhills
with bare feet, which, in the treacherous light of the moon,
often erred and stumbled, it seemed impossible that lie
should have had to wander so long witliont finding some
sort of a guiding sign. At length, so monotonous did
the silence and the silver become that he. even Oliver
Graith, was conscious of a sense of awe, in which his own.

GOLDEN BELLS,

29

personal troubles appeared to dwindle and shrivel up until
they became the veriest trifles in his own mind. It was as
if he had really fallen aleep upon the sea, and was still in
a sea-dream ; or, rather, as if he had passed through sleep
into another world.

And all at once, while descending a dune in which his
legs sank to the knees, he saw, as plainly as he had ever
seen Porthtyre steeple, an unlooked-for vision indeed.

Partly relieved against the starlit sky, partly against
other sand-hills, stood out a row of huge columns, carved
strangely and vaguely, but by no means rudely, into some
semblance of human figures without arms. Though their
bases were concealed by the sand, they still rose gigantic ;
nor did the fantastic light they yet more fantastically re-
flected diminish, but rather enhance by contrast, their air
of majestic calm — too majestic to inspire fear.

Never, in all his life, had Oliver Graith heard tell of a
row of carved columns on Hanno Sands. He waded out of
the loose sand till he approached them on firmer ground.
He then saw that the human resemblance had really been
a flight of moonlight fancy ; but that, short of this, these
giants of the waste were real. He could touch them ; and
the hand convinces with twice the force of the eye.
Carved and rounded they certainly were, and built of mass-
ive blocks that could not have been piled upon and per-
fectly adjusted to one another by mere strength of arm or
any ordinary force that builders use. Their iDroken capi-
tals, from which a molding here and there had fallen, and
projected from the sand that buried their pedestals, sup-
ported nothing. But they must have formed some great
entrance or gateway; for, between them, Oliver seemed to
see into the black heart of the opposite hill.

There had been moods and times when he would have
shrunk from passing between the columns. But even ca-
pacity for fear seemed to have been drowned out of him.
He felt himself to be truly wandering in another world —
just as the hero of some Eastern romance might stray into
some unknown city of strange people, speaking a strange
tongue, by passing through some suddenly discovered
postern in the wall of his own courtyard. Without reflec-
tion, almost as a matter of course, the nineteenth-century
vagabond passed between the columns that must have been
built there before what we call the history of Britain had
begun.

The passage offered no difficulties — indeed, it was posi-
tively easy. The broom of that wonderful wind had swept
clean a flight of broad stone steps that led downward into
a walled square, partly open to the sky, partly heaped up
with browui sand. The floor was hard; and, on stooping

80

GOLDEN BELLS.

and clearing an inch or two, he found it to be paved with
minute dies of white and black stone — tessellated he would
have called it, had he known the word.

He was now in a sort of shallow pit, with a huge dune
rising perpendicularly before him and those mysterious
columns towerhig behind. It seemed as if he had explored
this whole corner of dreamland, when he saw a break in
the wall to the left, whence he entered a narrow, roofless
passage, the walls sloping as they rose, and with a single
flagstone across them, at irregular intervals, here and
there, and occasional niches, in at least one of which was a
three-headed image without limbs and crowned with tow-
ers, in coal-black stone. At the end of the passage, which
the sandhills overhung, there was still light enough to see
that the walls were thickly covered with inscriptions in
unknown characters, or at least what might be so. And
here came two more surprises, of which one might well
have put an end to the adventures of Oliver Graith for-
ever.

He was looking up at the inscriptions when, by the
merest chance, his foot kicked against a fragment of stone,
which resulted in a sound of a slight splash far below. It
was just in time: for his eyes, following his ears, saw
yaAvning at his very feet the horrible black mouth of a
deep well, with round and slippery sides. Another step,
and down he would have gone.

A moment’s sickening shudder told him that he was
both awake and alive.

There was just room, and no more, for a man with firm
feet and a strong head to creep between the left-hand wall
and the mouth of the well. He would scarcely have pro-
ceeded further had it been a whit less dangerous; but the
peril was a challenge. So he took the narrow and slimy
ledge, which might give Avay beneath him for aught he
could tell, only to find his further passage closed by a gate
of thick and rusty iron bars, arranged in flourishes and
scrolls.

At least it would have closed his advance, and have
compelled him to return, were it not that the arch of the
gateway had fallen — doubtless to the bottom of the well.
As things were, it was quite possible, though by no means
easy, to clamber OA^er the gate; and, this done, he found
himself in yet another passage which, taking a sharp turn
to the right, brought him into a vaulted chamber.

This chamber also had been guarded by an iron gate; but
this had partly fallen, partly crumbled away. The vault
was partly dark, but not wholly ; for a great rent in one
corner of the roof let the moonbeams through.

Almost exactly under this fortuitous lantern was, near

G'OLDEN BELLSr

81

the center of the innermost wall, but standing somewhat
away from it, so that a man might pass between, a single
five-sided block of white marble, placed on a square step of
granite, and some four feet above the tessellated floor.
From the two foremost angles of the pentagonal surface
projected long horns curved upward, from each of which
hung a small bell by a light chain. The surface was
slightly concave, and, exactly in the center, was placed a
black stone, nearly conical in shape, but rough and unpol-
ished, and evidently owing its shape rather to some caprice
of nature than to human tools. From the foot of the altar
a spring bubbled into a broken trough, from which it es-
caped over the floor in self-made channels and pools, spark-
ling like jewels under the moon.

But even this was not all. As his eyes became accus-
tomed to tfie strange light he saw that it was not only
water-drops that gave back the moonbeams. He lifted
one glimmering object from i1 s twilight — it was no frag-
ment of stained and broken marble, but a chalice of the
one metal which, though it stains, is never stained, set
with flashing gems of blue, violet and green, barbaric gor-
geously. He took up another — it was a ewer set with
jewels that gave forth a rainbow light of their own. He
had seen diamonds in his travels : and in those days the
false had not learned how to outvie the true. A third — a
fourth — a twentieth; cup, casket, ewer, a score of things
all bejeweled and all worth their weight in what they
were

The vagabond’s heart beat so that he could hear it above
the bubbling of the spring. He was in a treasure-house of
jewels and gold.

One trouvaille more! It crumbled in his hand — a man's
brok^ skull, buried in gold and jewels under Hanno
Sands.

CHANGE THE THIRD.

OP ROAD.

Was it all a dream? -

Surely ; for after the wild wind and the magic moon, the
the sun had risen in a blaze over the eastward headlands,
to drive all dreams away. Oliver could not have sworn
that he had slept ; but he could almost have sworn that he
had dreamed a wonderful dream. It seemed to him that
he had been driven, a beggar and a vagabond, from his
own home ; that he had been carried off by a press-gang ;
that he had been drowned and had come to life again ; and
that he had wound up his day of adventure by setting

82

GOLDEN DELLS.

place and time at defiance and wandering at large into an-
other world. What else could it mean?

And yet were it not true that he had become a vagabond,
he would not have woke up in a strange place, hatless,
coat less, barefooted. And had he not strayed into another
world, those columns would not have been standing there,
gray and solemn.

He looked round; he rubbed his eyes. There were no
columns, no gateway. All was sand.

Nevertheless, now he came to think it all over in the sun-
shine, he remembered that he had hurried or staggered
away out of the treasure-house, in a sort of panic at the
skull — not by the way he had entered, but through a gap
in the wall of the cell that had led him straight out into the
open air. No doubt exhaustion and excitement had over-
come him, and he had fallen asleep behind a sandhill on
the other side of which, no doubt, these columns stiJl rose.
It could be no dream, even if he were giv^eu to dream.
That matter could soon be settled. He climbed to the top
of the nearest hill and looked east, west, south, north ; but
nothing was visible. He made a cast round, at first close,
and then more and more extended. But he found nothing
save seathrift and sand. Not that this was wonderful,
seeing the nature of the waste, where one might lose a
house, had there been one, and not have found it again for
a week, unless one chanced to strike just the right point of
view — then the odds were one would lose that, if one tried
to make one’s feet follow one’s eyes. Still, though not al-
together wonderful, it was strange that circle after circle
should be made in vain.

Stranger still, however, was it that the more he failed
to find the columns the more convinced he became that he
had passed between them into the treasure-house with
firm feet and open eyes. Could it have been a fairy palace
— he had heard of such things with enlightened incredulity
—that had crumbled at cock-crow? But a new test oc-
cured to him ; or rather befell him, without seeking. Feel-
ing for his knife — his last possession — he found such
pockets as coatlessness had left him filled with what was
no fairy gold; because it had not vanished away or
changed into chips and straws.

There were rings and bangles, of beaten and twisted gold
set with gems and pearls ; light chains of gold ; strangely
shaped coins; three human teeth; and, lastly, two little
golden bells — the same that he had seen dangling from the
altar horns. The gems Avere not, indeed, cut in any fashion
he had ever seen in his travels; but they were none the
less brilliant for that— rather more. There was one jewel,

GOLDEN BELLS.

33

in special, that must have been fit for a royal crown, such
was its size and splendor. ^

Everybody, I suppose, who has heard of nothing else
has heard of diamonds; and, however unimaginative, has
had his fancy stirred by stories of their value. Oliver, as
— hungry but forgetting to be hungry — he watched its
flashes, called to mind one of the queerest articles of con-
traband ever carried by the Lively Peg — an old French
lady, escaping from her fellow-countrymen not only with
her head but with her jew^els; and of all her jewels not one
had approached this either in form or luster. At length
he sat down, dazed with the new trick that fortune had
played.

Why, if these things were but half the value they looked,
they would buy back Zion Farm, and serve to stock it all
over again, tie scarce dared to return the jew^el, set in a
heavy disk of solid gold, curiously engraved, to his pocket
lest it should vanish if once let out of sight ; and he drew
it out again twenty times to make sure, before finally
trusting it out of his eyes. At length he forced his hesita-
tion to a close by w^rapping it in Susan’s w^atch-case and
stowing both together in his fob, w^hile he made up a bun-
dle of the other things in his neckerchief, knotting the
corners together so as to carry them conveniently in his
hand. The bells, at least their chains, he twined round his
left arm under his shirt-sleeve, bracelet-wise, so that the
cold pressure might keep him convinced of the reality of
the treasure he carried. _

Thus equipped, he made an oberv|faon of the sun, and
started due w^estward, counting his Seps as he walked ; so
that, so soon as he arrived at the first familiar spot (such
as the w^atercourse) he wmuld be able by counting the steps
therefrom eastward, to return approximately to the scene
of his vision. At every hundred steps he made a notch
wdth his knife upon the stem of his pipe ; and so, counting
mechanically, was able to divide his thoughts between two
great immediate needs

How to bring his treasure to market; and breakfast be-
fore all.

* * * * * ^ ^

Even so might Midas have tramped over the sands of
Pactolus, carrying gold enough to purchase an empire, yet
not enough to buy a crust of bread or a draught of w ater
by the road. To buy back Zion Farm had now become a
trifle ; but breakfast, for all useful purposes, might as w^ell
be truly in the Avorld of dreams. It w^as true he might
tramp on till he reached the farm itself, at no very vast
distance, and forthwith renew his acquaintance with as
much as the bailiff might have left from yesterday’s chine;

34

GOLDEN BELLS.

or rather, a little further, to Tom Polwarth’s smithy.
Only it would never do to return among his neighbors in
the plight of a vagabond with nothing to say for himself;
while, if he told his story and showed his wealth — no; that
would certainly never do. A great deal would have to be
thought over before setting the whole parish wandering
over Hanno Sands in search of Eldorado.

* * :it * * ♦ ♦

The same sun that had dissipated columns, gateway,
arches, horned altar, and all, as if they had been built of
Lunar marble, rose upon much less magical work of that
day’s wind and that night’s moon.

It had fared ill indeed with a certain cutter which,
whether through ill-seamanship, or worse fortune, had be-
come the most helpless and forlorn of all created things.
She was not an absolute wreck, in the sense that she held
together; but she was hopelessly crippled. Her cargo,
whatever it was, had shifted ; her rudder was broken, and
her mast had gone. In short, she lay a mere log upon the
heaving swell.

Of those on board, two were apart— one paced the slop-
ing deck in stolid meditation ; the other leaned on the bul-
wark with folded arms, and looked dismally at the shore.
The half dozen others were gathered round the broken
mast, apparently in hot debate — some of them, at least, to
judge from their excited voices and rapid gesticulations,
while one or two were content to throw in a heavy word
here and there. The^ last were seamen of the fishermen
type, and Britons ; •pothers seemed to be of Babel, and
of no type at all. They were naked to the shoulders, bare-
footed and black-bearded, ear-ringed, and either bare-
headed, or wearing grotesque caps of scarlet or blue.

The man who stolidly paced the deck was a grim and
grizzled sailor, or fisherman, of sixty years or more, re-
sembling, but for a dash of the merchant -skipper in his
costume, the natives of Babel rather than of Britain. He
meditated and he— chewed. No doubt, in his experience,
he had seen too many wrecks to be taken aback at finding
himself concerned in one. No skipper can lose a ship with-
out inward raging ; only there . are not many who would
make so little outward show of rage. But then the group
round the mast made it the more needful that the outcome
of the debate should find the skipper with his head cool.

He ho leaned over the bulwark was of no less marked
individuality, and therefore as different from the skipper
as man can be from man. He was middle-aged, big and
burly ; and a landsman every inch of him. One would no
more expect to see him clinging to that bulwark to keep
his feet from sliding down that sloping deck than the skip-

GOLDEN BELLS.

35

per in a pulpit, or liis crew among his congregation. He
was dressed plainly, it is true, and almost roughly ; but it
was plain to see that the coarse serge shirt and the knitted
cap were in his case a disguise — and a bad one. He was
the only man on board who had shaved within four-and-
twenty hours; and the bristly roughness which the wild
weather had compelled him to accept for the present
looked like the first symptom of respectability departing.
He was handsome in a sort of homely, business-like way,
with regular features, fair, somewhat fli)rid complexion, a
resolute but kindly moulh, and frank gray eyes. So at
least one might argue of him were he met under more
congenial conditions — say in a parlor, with the mahogany
shining before him, and the ladies gone ; or riding home
after a good bargain on market day. Now, however, the
face, as it gazed shoreward, was fraught with profound
gloom.

Presently the clamor round the broken mast died into
silence; and one of the men swaggered aft to the skipper,
followed by two of his mates, and spoke in this wise:

“We’ve talked it out, Captain Vasco; and we’re for the
shore.”

It was a foreigner who spoke, with a voice like the
hoarse rasp o£ a shingly beach, and black eyes that one
could not see without thinking of daggers. Captain Vasco
shrugged his shoulders, and looked from the sailor to the
landsman and back again. Then he looked round the
ship, from bowsprit to broken helm; and then to the
sky.

“No, Gaspard,” said he, abruptly, but without anger.
“ That won’t do. A bargain’s a bargain. We’re bound
for Spain.”

“ But not in the Lively Peg!” said the other. “ Unless
Spain’s gone below.”

“H’m!” grunted Captain Vasco. “No. I’ve sailed
this cutter ever since she was launched; and ITl sail her
till she sinks. And a bargain’s a bargain. And ”

“And maybe, skipper,” spoke out an Englishman,
“ you’ll tell us how you mean to make Spain in a broken
hull.”

“And maybe, my good friend Matthew,” answered
the skipper, “you will tell me how you will make the
shore. ’ ’

“The boat hasn’t been blown away, has it? and we’re
not so beat that we can’t make shift to pull to Porthtyre.”

“And there’s no more breath to it,” said the third, as
the rest also crawled or scrambled aft and formed a menac-
ing group round. “So if you don’t want to be left alone
with Jonah, you’ll just give the word.”

86

GOLDEN BELLS.

“ And still if I say no?”

“ Then there’s six of us to one.”

It must be owned that the skipper had taken the protest
mildly, considering that he had by no means the reputation
of being the mildest of men. However, he is not the first
among rulers, nor has he been by any means the last, who
has courted the force majeure. He thrust back his cap,
gave his scalp a thorough scratching, and turned toward
him who was still staring at the shore.

“ A bargain is a bargain, m’sieur,” said he. “But ’tis
like a ship; ’tis always wind and weather allowing.
There’s nothing for it but to man the boat for Porthtyre. ’ ’

The other faced round.

“ What! you will desert the ship — you will ”

“ I’m sorry, m’sieur. But ” he shrugged his shoul-

ders to his ears.

Without waiting for orders, the boat was already being
prepared, with as much noise and clatter, and as little
seeming result, as if their lives depended upon doing noth-
ing with frantic zeal.

“ Captain Vasco,” cried the landsman, “ this is my ship
for this voyage ; you are my skipper ; these men are my
crew, until I am landed in Spain.”

“ I am desolate, m’sieur. But what is to do?”

“You ask me that! as if you hadn’t pulled through
worse troubles than this. Captain Vasco. Has no make-
shift mast ever been rigged — no rudder mended — no cargo
ever been thrown overboard? There’ll be no loss; I’ll buy
your cargo as it stands. Set the men to work. And
though a bargain is a bargain,” he proclaimed, raising his
voice, “ I’ll double everything I promised to pay. Heav-
ens ! to think that this cutter should give in before half a
gale!”

At the announcement of double pay the clamor ceased
for a moment. But the next Gaspard broke in fiercely :

“ You are wrong; the Lively Peg did not give in before
half a gale. ’ ’

• ‘ She can be righted, then ?’ ’

‘ ‘ Maybe. But a gale like that ! Diable ! Never was
such wind. W^hat use of righting when it will come
again?”

“ Come again ! What the devil do you mean?”

“Ay; come again; and again, and again, and always
again! That wind does not come for nothing, nvsieur.
That wind did not come from the north, nor south, nor
east, nor west. It came ”

“Well?”

‘ ‘ Out of the ship ! A ship that is not to leave port carrie/^
her own storm.”

GOLDEN BELLS.

37

“What rubbish is the fellow talking?” asked the passen-
ger, turning to Captain Vasco. “A ship carrying her own
storm! If that’s part of the cargo, I’ll buy the right to
have that over, too.”

“No doubt — very much rubbish, m’sieur,” said the
skipper, who, having relations with France, was consid-
ered an enlightened man. ‘ ‘ But— all the same, as Gaspard
says, there never was such a gale ; and I have been at sea
fifty years — man and boy. ’ ’

“ And what then?”

“It is true — there never has been a wind so great, so
wild, so strong, so strange ! and — it is true — this is a stolen
ship from that poor lad; and the Blessed Virgin knows
what else is aboard. It is all very much rubbish, of course
— but — in fine, that is the thought, m’sieur.” He lifted his
cap and crossed himself, for all that he was so enlightened
a man.

The passenger recoiled against the bulwark.

“What crazy, cowardly folly! You, grown men, stand
there and tell me that this cutter is tied to this shore
till ”

“ Till you’re no longer aboard, m’sieur!” said Gaspard.
“You have touched it, there. While you’re aboard, here
we stay, by gale or calm. What good to try to right her —
now?”

“ Captain Vasco,” said the passenger, imperiously, “tell
these men that they are fools. ’ ’

“ They are not fools,” said the skipper. “ They are good
seamen. And it is true; never before was such a wind!
It is very, very much rubbish— and a bargain is, without
doubt, a bargain — and I am desolate, m’sieur; but — in fine,
there has never been such a wind!”

“Good God! and for an old woman’s drivel like that
you would throw overboard enough for you to end your
days rich men — you and they. No; don’t tell me that
these are sailors. They are ”

“ Men, m’sieur; men who have met every storm in Bis-
cay; men who have lived in a battle all their days; men
who fear neither gallows nor guillotine: men who risk
life every hour of every day. And thus it is they know
when to fear. ’ ’

“What! they mean to send me ashore?” asked the pas-
senger, turning ashy pale.

The skipper said not a word.

‘ ‘ They cannot— they shall not ! On shore ! Good God—
don’t you know that I am fiying for my life that you
might as well hang me to the yard-arm with your own
hands? Haven’t I stood by you a lunidred timesj when

38

GOLDEN BELLS.

the law was after you— and are you going to betray me, in
a panic, the moment it is after me?”

“The Blessed Virgin — I mean the Goddess of Reason—
forbid, m’sieur! Only, if you will not come ashore — you
must stay.”

“You would leave me on board — alone?”

“ I am again desolate— but that is as m’sieur shall
please.”

“But it is not as m’sieur shall please!” cried Gaspard.
“We will not have the boat sunk between ship and shore.

He has hired the ship ; it is his ; and ’ ’

He will not drown,” said another, glancing up to
where the yard-arm should have been. But the jest, grim
as it was, fell as flat as if it had expressed the serious be-
lief of them all.

I know not whether that other belief still prevails — that
when some unaccountable catastrophe, baffling all ordi-
nary experience, befalls a ship at the outset of a voyage, its
cause must be traced to the curse inseparable from crime.
For there are crimes (it is thought) so unspeakable as to
raise even the winds and waves in revolt against the es-
cape of the evil-doer. It may be that steam has altered
all that ; and no doubt the experience of Atlantic lines in
recent times points even to a certain sympathy between
the inventions and the crimes of man. No murderer ever
yet sank a steam packet ; no forger or other fraudulent
financier ever made an engine break down in the Irish
sea. And so perhaps the fancy has died out because the
fact itself is no more.

But that the belief was in full force on board the Lively
Peg of Porthtyre, its victim only too clearly saw. That
wonderful wind had borne evidence against him as a Jonah
—guilty, perhaps, of much, but convicted of Heaven knew
not what among men whose own consciences — if they kept
such things — were anything but clear. If he made a clean
breast of all his sins, he knew perfectly well that having
by ill luck taken this fancy into their united brains, the
men would take it for granted that there was something
infinitely more monstrous behind — something that even to
them would seem worthy of the avenging justice of the
storm. Treachery it might be, or infamously foul play, or
something that a very pirate would condemn.

He alone could fully know the reason that impelled him
to risk the Bay of Biscay in a wreck rather than return to
the shore now full in view. But there was a worse choice
before him — the choice between returning to that shore
alone, and remaining alone on board. For that the men
were resolute, and without a shadow of compunction in
their superstitious •ruelty — that is to say the crudest be-

GOLDEN BELLS,

39

cause the honestest of cruelties— he perceived as clearly as
that the enlightened skipper was in truth the most ab-
jectly superstitious of them all. And, for that matter, had
not the shipper cause, who, faithless to his own trust,
might dimly suspect that he also might have something
about him of the Jonah too?

Meanwhile the boat was well-nigh ready to put off. Cap-
tain Vasco looked questioningly at his passenger.

“ I am desolate!” said he.

The other made up his mind. There might be no more
than half a chance for him on shore ; but there was none at
sea.

“Make room! ITl chance it,” he cried, “cowaidsand
murderers though you are. One moment ; keep the men,
Captain Vasco, while I fetch something from below.”

He reached the ladder as well as the sloping deck heav-
ing on the dead swell would allow.

‘‘ What are we waiting for?” growled one.

“He’s gone after that box ”

“Ay ; that box of wind !’ ’

‘ ‘ Then ’ ’

Two strong pair of arms forced the hesitating skipper
into the boat, and then seized the oars.

That gale of yesterday must have blown from some-
where, after all ; and since from no point of the compass —
as every man would now have sworn on the crucifix — their
minds, already the prey of panic, became fired with wilder
tales. What sailor was it who, as everybody knew, used
to carry his own winds in a leather bag, and made good us6:
of them, till one unlucky day the bag burst, and — why, the
tale was as old, and therefore as true, as the hills.

And so it came to pass that when the Lively Peg’s pas-
senger seized the ring of the casket he heard the sound of
oars. Hurrying back to the ladder, the hulk gave a terri-
ble lurch; he fell back with all his weight, bruised and
stunned ; and the casket rattled and clattered down some-
where or other— for the moment, it was all the same to
him.

He must have lain there some time ; for when he came
to himself, feeling crushed and battered, he could not, for
a full minute, realize where he was or what had happened.
But full consciousness had to come back at last; and then
it seemed to him that he might as well have broken his
neck, and have done with everything, once for all.

He, and it may be the lost casket, alone could tell wLat
reason he had for knowing how far justice, without the
help of a warrant, had arrested him in the very act of
flying. He alone could know what instinct had moved

40

GOLDEN BELLS,

those savage seamen to connect him with that unaccount-
able gale. It was not only bodily pain, though that was
sharp enough, that made him groan. Nor was it only tho
knowledge that, though in sight of land, he was virtually
alone and helpless in the middle of the sea.

A good swimmer might make the shore; and the shore,
even with a gallows upon it, was still the shore. But, as
he tried to pull himself together and rise, a still sharper
agony warned him that the shore, though he were the best
swimmer in all England, was not for him. Justice ! What-
ever he had done, whatever he had deserved, it was some-
thing beyond justice that a human being should lie there
to starve, or rot without a chance of aid— or if there were
a chance, then of aid that would only send him, at best, to
the hulks for the remainder of his days. To the hulks?
No— it was not to the hulks that forgers were sent in those
Draconic times, when men were hanged for infinitely
slighter things. Why, if he were a second Leander, and if
his limbs were in working trim, should he swim to the gib-
bet? And he had not even that sorry chance of escape from
the wreck, broken as he was by that heavy fall.

But it was too prison-like below. And so, though every
step of the ladder was a new agony, he managed to drag
himself, inch by inch, and groan by groan, to the deck, and
lay there panting, the sweat of pain oozing and dripping
from his brow.

Nothing was in sight, save the dunes, and the black cliffs
that hid Porthtyre.

And he could not even cry out to the justice of Heaven
against the injustice of man. He had no right even to
pray.

Then the sun came out in his glory, and ali the sea broke
out into a smile. What should nature care that one man
was baffled in his schemes, and was as helpless as any
other of a million wounded worms?

“ Oh my God!” he groaned out at last, ” only save me
out of this, and I will never do another wrong thing. No
— never again, on my oath and on my soul!”

5); ;i<

It must have been high noon when he heard a scram-
bling noise on the cutter’s side. Rescue — or arrest? Des-
perate as was his plight, he dreaded even rescue at the
hands of man.

But when he looked up and saw human eyes looking into
his, they seemed more terrible than even the pitiless gaze
of the sun.

“ Oliver Graith 1”

It was a stifled groan, as his hands went up before his
eyes— with tlie gesture of one who sees the ghost of a vie-

GOLDEN BELLS. 41

tim, though it was in the broad light of day, when no hon-
est ghost alks abroad.

And yet why should not the broad daylight be chosen
by the ghost of an honest man? True, he had no reason to
believe that Oliver Graith was dead as well as ruined. At
twenty- one, one does not kill one’s self for the loss of land
— though it is true that the heir of Linne tried to hang him-
self under identical conditions, and that ballad-mongers
were men of the world who seldom blundered about what
other men and women would do or say.* But then Oliver
Graith was a youth of hot head and quick fists, as all the
county knew ; and such, when things go wrong, have other
roads out of the world than where four cross one another.
He was just the man to die fighting for his own — or to be
hanged against his will.

At any rate, there was something grewsome in his sud-
den apparition on board the Lively Peg, just when she was
a wreck, with only one miserable and con science -stricken
creature on board, who was in no condition to cope with
the flesh and blood of this world— much less with a ghost
from the other. “Conscience doth make cowards of us
all,” it is written. But it might with, at least, equal and
much more common truth be written. Cowardice doth
make conscience in us all. This man was afraid, and so he
found a conscience — by the hour.

“ Lancelot Ambrose?”

That was Oliver who spoke, recoiling.

The exclamation broke the ghostly spell ; but it raised
more definite terror. Indeed, it was almost more piteous
than contemptible to see this big man, who should have
worn broadcloth and have been fresh from the razor,
prone and cringing before the feet of the man whom he
had cheated out of house and home. Instead of putting
his hands before his face, he covered his head with his
arm.

But, as the expected blow did not come, he put it down
again, and look(id up with a ghastly sort of scowl.

“What do you mean to do?” asked he.

“ Then it is you — Susan’s father--my mother’s friend!”
said Oliver, with sorrowful scorn. “Do with you? What
should I do?”

It was wonderful how, finding that he was not to meet
with summary vengeance, the courage of Lancelot Am-
brose returned. His brows relaxed ; his cheeks grew less
deadly pale.

* If any reader of this, in these days of much useless knowledge and
little useful wisdom, is unacquainted' with the career of the young gen-
tlemen who had so much in common with Oliver Graith of Porthtyre,
the sooner he buys a “ Percy ” the better for him will it be.

42

GOLDEN BELLS.

“Of course you all think the y^orst of me. Of course
you do. But if you think I’ve got any good out of my
troubles — look round and see.”

“I see you’ve managed to wreck the sweetest craft that
ever sailed,” said Oliver, leaning against the broken mast
with folded arms.

“Will you listen to one word?”

“Poor Peg!” said Oliver, with a sigh.

“Of course you think I’ve been feathering my nest out
of yours. I can guess,” he went bn more eagerly, “ what
they’re saying in Eedruth— if you’ve been there. Then
look here — whatever has come to you, worse has come to
me. I’ve done everything for the best— everything. I’ve
looked after your interests as if they were my own ”

“Yes, you’ve done that,” said Oliver.

“ And if things had gone even reasonably well, you
would have received double your capital from my hands.
I did too well, Oliver, I made myself liable, as your trustee,
for investments made solely and wholly for you. Do you
see now? When things went wrong, you lost your farm —
I lost my bank: everything I had, down to my bare skin.
Your trusteeship has ruined me, Oliver. But— I forgive
you; it’s not your fault, my poor boy 1”

As he spoke he raised himself on his elbow, and looked
Oliver straighter and straighter in the face, while his
words flowed more freely and his voice more plausible as
he went on. And when he spoke of forgiveness, he posi-
tively took Oliver’s breath awa^^ by the absolute unctuous-
ness of his melancholy sympathy.

But his faith in the man was gone.

“Forgiveness!” said he, looking round the cutter.
“ What business had you to ruin yourself for my sake?
No ”

“ I And no fault with you, my lad — none. But you did
spend hard ! You used to drive me to my wits’ end. I
had to take desperate measures to keep up the supplies, if
anything was to be left at all. ’ ’

Oliver hung his head. There was something in that ; and
it did not occur to him to lay his own faults upon another
man’s shoulders, even though he might have done so justly
— he had been recklessly extravagant, he had to own.
Ambrose saw the twinge of shame, and, like a man of tact,
pressed it no harder. Indeed, he could not do so without
exposing the fallacy of his own argument; and, as a mas-
ter of fence, instinct told him when and where to refrain.

“ What brings you into this plight— the Peg and you?”
asked Oliver, abruptly.

“The devil’s own weather — and a crew of cowards, who
have left me here to perish miserably.”

GOLDEN BELLS,

43

“ Who was skipper? Not Captain Vasco?”

“ Yes — the cowardly scoundrel!”

“ Captain Vasco^ is neither coward nor scoundrel,” said
Oliver. ” Tell the’ truth, Lancelot Ambrose ”

“ What else should I tell? I had to escape abroad. For
one thing, I had not the heart to look on you and your poor
mother’s ruin; for another thing, I had a persecutor, who
would have sent me to rot out the rest of my days in a
bankrupt debtor’s jail. It is not I, but an infernal Greek,
or Jew, or whatever the impenitent thief was — a swindling
peddler, Nicephorus Bedrosian, who has really foreclosed on
Zion Farm. I wish I’d never seen the hunchback’s sooty
face; he’s a devil, not a man.”

Oliver started — he. recognized in the description of the
man of whom Ambrose’s lawyer had already spoken the
outlandish personage he had seen outside the bank door,
and who had impressed him so strangely.

“ It is he whose devilish cunning has ruined us both,
and half Redruth besides,” Ambrose went on. And, if I
fall into the clutches of his claws, I am a dead man. I ap-
pealed to Captain Vasco— in your name, Oliver, because I
knew you would not want to hound your unfortunate man
to a living grave — a debtor’s prison, a foretaste of hell 1
When the crew had to leave the wreck, I chose to leave
myself in the hands of— the Deity” (he choked over the
English word) ” rather than tumble into those of Niceph-
orus Bedrosian. How did you come here?”

“As if I could see the poor Peg lying crippled off the
dues, within a mile, and not swim on board to see ! But
that’s nought to you. I suppose what I ought to do is ”

“Is ”

“Yes-?”

“I’m — hanged if I know.”

Ambrose drew a deep sigh. “I suppose you’re thinking
of the best way to drop a disabled man overboard. Well,
it’s natural. As well be at the bottom of the sea as any-
where else — now. But — my poor girl 1’ ’

“It strikes me,” said Oliver, “you should have thought
of your poor girl before. ’ ’

But the touch of pathos, true or false, had told. Robber
as the Redruth banker might be, he was Susan’s father;
the father of the giri who had filled Oliver’s empty pockets
with bread and beef, and whose keepsake, despite all that
had befallen him, he still wore. He had spared her —
weakly and foolishly, no doubt — the pain of premature
knowledge of her father’s villainy and her own shame.
How could he take the only adequate vengeance, since it
Would fall the worst upon her?

44

GOLDEN BELLS,

“The best thing I can do,” he went on, coldly, “is to
get you out of this and ”

“How?”

“I can swim back, and get a boat at Porthtyre.”

“ And put me ashore?”

“ I can’t leave you here.”

“ For the love of Heaven, Oliver, don’t take me ashore.”

“ There’s nought else to be done.”

“ Yes— there is. Some outward-bound ship is sure to be
passing. Eun up some signal of distress, and get me put
on board as a shipwrecked mariner. As soon as the signal’s
seen, you can get ashore your own way. I would work
my passage out; I don't care where I go; and though I’m
^ landsman, I’ve got muscle; and I’ve got brains ”

“ H’m — I used to think so. But — no.”

“Yes, Oliver! You care for poor Susan, I suppose, a
little; in a brotherly way. Do you want to have, prowling
about the place, a disgraced and ruined wretch of a father,
hiding from the sheriff, and begging after dark for a crust
of bread and a cup of water? I mustn’t be selfish, my good
boy. But — once abroad — I shall never trouble a soul; I
shall never be heard of again.”

Oliver reflected. Assuredly, since vengeance under the
name of punishment had to be foregone, it would be a great
thing to get rid of Lancelot Ambrose once for all.

“And abroad,” said Ambrose, “ I might be able to re-
deem—to repay. ” ^

That was his first false note ; and indeed it speaks vol-
umes for his sagacity that he had struck none sooner.

“ As if — supposing I helped you— I’d do it for that!” said
Oliver, scornfully. “If I helped you, it would be to see
your face, and hear your name, never again. Nothing can
ever be redeemed — nothing ever repaid. Can you give me
back my faith in Lancelot Ambrose— in mortal man?”

“True; I was a fool. Help me to get rid of me then.
That’s all.”

He spoke so humbly and so sadly that at any rate the
false note, if nothing else, was redeemed. Susan, of Porth-
tyre. was saving her father ; as unconsciously, it may be,
as the spirits of the dead shield the living whom they loved,
whom they forgot, and by whom they are forgotten.

Every minute of meditation told. At last said Oliver:

“ I suppose I’m an ass. But I suppose there’s biscuit on
board — as well as two infernal fools. ’ ’

Knowing the whereabouts of things on the Lively Peg,
he satisfied the pangs of hunger, and the result was an in-
crease of charity. Lancelot Ambrose, or rather Susan’s
father, might, after all, be an unfortunate man, sinned
agjuiist rather than sinning; Nicephorus Bedrosian had at

GOLDEN BELLS.

45

any rate all the repulsiveness that mystery inevitably
carries to a simple and open mind. Oliver also, knowing
where to look, found some of the best and cheapest brandy
in Europe, and some amazingly strong and coarse tobacco
by way of dessert after his breakfast. It was a queer
affair, that he should be tending the man who had robbed
and ruined him ; but he could not find it in his heart to drink
— so strong is the force of habit — by himself ; so he filled
a cup with brandy, and gave it to his enemy. Then, sit-
ting down with his back against the mast, he gave himself
up to not uncomfortable reflection. For nine tenths of
comfort belong to the body ; and it is only unhealthy weak-
lings in whom the body fails to have its sovereign way.

The result of the second pipe was that he could not find
it in his heart to put his enemy ashore, any more than he
could find it there to drink alone. Yes — it was clearly for
the best that Lancelot Ambrose should be sent abroad —
and the further the better. It was annoying that he should
be delayed on his way to put things right again ; but some
ship or other was sure to be soon passing by.

The result of the third pipe, smoked in dreamy silence,
was that he fell asleep — as soundly as if he had been
between the lavendered sheets at Zion Farm.

Something of the pleasure came back to Lancelot Am-
brose that a once famous but broken-down boxer, whose
glory has departed from him, may feel when he finds that
there is somebody whom he can beat still. He was
strengthened and refreshed by the discovery that, though
he had ceased to be a magnate in Redruth, and though even
a crew of ignorant ruffians hadf^^sed to respect or fear
him, he could still master the raw lad whom he had robbed
and betrayed. Conscience was beginning to evaporate,
and would no doubt have dried up altogether if it were not
for those pains in his limbs. However, it was some com-
fort that Heaven had apparently accepted his proffered
bargain. Why should Oliver Graith have been sent in so
unaccountable a manner to the Lively Peg, just in the nick
of time, unless to be the instrument of rescue for Lancelot
Ambrose?

It is downright sacrilege to throw the advantages vouch-
safed by Providence away. That is to be unworthy of
them indeed; and, by sending Oliver Graith on board.
Providence had, as if in so many words, expressed its clear
intention of rescuing Ambrose, even if such rescue should
imply the sacrifice of Oliver. The question was, what did
Providence intend Ambrose to do ; for self-help is the prime
condition of Heaven’s help, as every good man of business
knows. Hei'e lay Ambrose, awake, but helpless; there

46

GOLDEN BELLS,

Oliver, sound and strong all through and all over, but
sleeping as though he had not an enemy in the world,
much less one scarce a couple of yards away. For nobody
needs to be told that to injure a man means to hate him,
all over and all through. And it means to envy him as
well as to hate him; because the injured man must needs
have in his mind something of priceless value which the
wrong-doer has thrown away.

However, the moment demanded neither envy nor
hatred, for which there is always plenty of time, but
simply a practical suggestion how the strength, activity,
and simplicity of Oliver should be utilized for the escape of
Ambrose firstly from the wreck, secondly from the gal-
lows. There had been something in what he had himself
proposed — to wait for an outward-bound vessel, and to
buy a passage in her; for when he had spoken of being
penniless he had lied. There was no need of working out
his passage while he had that cash-box to the fore. He had
simply to invent some plausible story to account for his
being there in seaman’s clothes, and for the rest to trust
to the power of gold. Oliver would do the watching and
signaling, and prevent trouble with the wreck ; and would
be useful, moreover, in stopping pursuit and scandal on re-
turning to shore. If Providence had sent him for no
larger object than this, it was enough; and he was becom-
ing conscious of a moral and intellectual ascendancy over
his victim that removed every shade of doubt whether he
might have to deal with a will, as well as with an arm,
stronger than his own.

But — great Heaven, of what was he dreaming! The con-
fusion of the fall, the greater bewilderment of coming back
to his senses, and, finally, the panic that had at first over-
come him on finding himself face to face with a ghost, had
prevented his mind from realizing that, while he was bas-
ing his plans upon the possession of the contents of the
cash-box, the box itself had gone he knew not whither.
It was no doubt safe on board somewhere. But where?
That was no search on which he could dispatch Oliver, for
exceedingly self-evident reasons; and yet the thought of
being unable to get it back gave him a cold shudder. It
was virtually for the sake of that box that he had become
a prisoner on board the Lively Peg, where alone it could be
of no possible service to him. What on earth was to be
done?

However, men will do for gold, at a pinch, what they will
not do for life itself; and no wonder, remembering what
magic metal it is which gives most of them the idea that
life is worth living on the whole. Quietly, so as not to dis-
turb the sleeper (not that there was much risk of that), he

GOLDEN BELLS,

47

pulled his bruised and aching limbs together, every one of
which felt broken, and, though knives seemed pressing
into his heart and lungs, managed to crawl backward
down the ladder once more. He remembered where he
had heard the clatter of the box, and groped about the
narrow place on his hands and knees.

Unhappily the wind, to whose pranks there seemed no
end, had made it desperately easy to lose anything small
and heavy on board the wrecked cutter. Her ballast was
all at sixes and sevens, and in its shifting had already
broken through some of the inner timbers — the box might
have pitched into the hold itself for aught Ambrose could
tell. There was no sign of it anywhere, and it was hope-
less for any man to attempt such a search as that alone.
The cold shudder deepened into utter sickness of heart.
Had he been in less bodily agony — though he forgot it in
this worse mischance — he must have raved.

Better would it have been to have left the box-- the cause
of his plight— have gone off with the rest, and have taken
his chance on shore. He had gone through all these hor-
rors in vain. The account with Providence was more than
squared ; whatever he had done, he was the creditor now.
Not that he thought of that — thought was for the moment
paralyzed. And, strange to say, if anything is ever
strange, the new power of which he had been becoming
conscious over Oliver Graith seemed to die out, now that
both were equally without a penny in the world.

And what made it the more maddening was that th(ire,
all the while, that fatal box must be.

Well, there was only one thing to be done. That box
must be found ; and if not by one man, then by two. No
doubt it would seem a little ironical for the robber to set
the robbed searching for the plunder. But it was no mo-
ment to dwell on points of humor. It had to be done, and
that in such wise that the robbed should restore his own
property to the robber with a bow. Perhaps this was why
he was sent on board !

So yet again the martyr of mammon dragged himself up
the ladder of agony, clinching in his groans. And there
lay the victim of the same great god sleeping as soundly
as if there was no such thing as gold in the world.

Crossing the slant of the deck as well as he was able,
partly dragging himself along and partly crawling on
hands and knees, Ambrose got close to Oliver to wake
him. It is rather a cruel thing, no doubt, to break the
slumber of a poor fellow who has no better possession; but
necessity knows no law. And what necessity can be greater
than that of Lancelot Ambrose? Indeed, he deserves some
credit, because he did what he had to do in the gentlest

48

GOLDEN BELLS.

way that circumstances allowed. It would not do to sud-
denly wake a man who, in the confusion of waking, might
be conscious only that his enemy’s face was within reach
of his fist, and go for him promptly, without thinking.
So, instead of shaking Oliver or bawling in his ear, Am-
brose pulled gently at his shirt-sleeve.

But

No sooner had he touched the sleeve than the big man
drew back his finger as if it liad touched hot iron, and
with a hot flush, as if he were the shyest of girls. Bound
the sleeper’s arm was twisted a gold chain; and as Oliver
stirred and stretched for a moment at the touch, his pock-
ets jingled with the sweetest music earth contains — it was
like a distant tinkle of golden bells.

Delicately, as a wondering child may touch a flower, and
regarding sleep as a sacred thing, the fingers of Ambrose
wandered over Oliver’s unconscious body, lifting a wet
scrap of linen here and there, wherever it dared. How
heavily the fellow did sleep, to be sure! It is not every-
body who would sleep like that when positively overrun-
ning with barbaric gold. And the gold was in such singu-
lar form, forms which not even the experienced eye of the
banker had ever seen, and he had seen a good deal. That
it was gold he could see at a glance, and — jewels 1 The sun-
beams sent a flash of diamond into his eyes.

Was he mad or dreaming? It did seem like a dream —
the flight of the crew ; the fall ; the apparition of Oliver
Graith, apparently fallen from the skies, bringing down a
king’s ransom. But then people’s bones do not stab them
in dreams. He was not dreaming. He was not mad.
What, then, could it mean— he being awake and sane?

And perhaps it was not quite so impossible as it looked,
after all. The Graiths, elder and younger, and further
back Graiths still, had traded between Porthtyre and San
Sebastian for a good many years by now ; and then the
gulf between smuggler and wrecker is of the smallest,
while that between both and pirate is not extravagantly
large. What if some treasure-ship, in the course of the
last hundred years or so, had gone on the rocks or the
dunes conveniently near to Zion Farm? Ships from the
East Indies and from the West passed Porthtyre on their
way to Bristol. What if one of these had fallen into the
hands of the Graiths —grandsire, father, or son? About
Oliver himself there had always been a dash of the buc-
caneer; and, for that matter, there was no reason why
these chains and jewels should not be relics of ancient
cruises in the Spanish Main, for the work was outlandish,
and might bear the stamp of Mexico or Peru. But if
gained by more recent piracy or wreckage, there was ob-

GOLDEN BELLS.

49

vious reason why the treasure should be a family secret,
not to be touched save in case of utmost need.

And Ambrose had been content with the produce of
mortgages, while a treasure like this was lying hidden,
perhaps buried under the apple-trees, at the farm! His
fingers ceased their explorations reluctantly, and his eyes
sparkled with a greed that made the diamonds turn pale.
And yet, how came it that a man owning such a treasure
as this had let his land go, which he could have redeemed
over and over again with what he bore upon his body, and
was wandering forth like a thief and a vagabond? Only
one explanation could suggest itself to the mind of Ambrose,
or rather, two:

The jewels and the gold had been obtained by crime.

The intent of Providence in sending Oliver Graith on
board the Lively Peg had been made clear. What mat-
tered the loss of the cash- box now, with this golden vaga-
bond asleep under his very hands?

He had vowed that he would never do a wrong thing —
never again. And he could keep his vow. There could be
nothing wrong in depriving an evident thief, smuggler,
wrecker, bandit, pirate, of obvious plunder. Ambrose
could do no less as a penitent man.

Inspired by so obvious a duty to society, nay, to the
whole human race, he breathed hard, and something be-
yond bodily pain brought the sweat to his brow. And he
had to decide quickly. It was true he. had looked to
Oliver’s service in keeping a lookout for outward-bound
ships and for keeping the wreck from suddenly rolling to
the bottom. But, then, if Oliver should wake and, his
service over, swim ashore with his secret booty 1 The very
thought was enough to make any good man of business,
whose first instinct is to abhor waste, gnash his teeth and
swear like a trooper.

And it was double waste — not only was the treasure out
of the hands that would make good use of it, but in those
of one who probably did not understand its value, and, if
he ever learned it, would squander it, just as he had squan-
dered his capital, his cutter, and his farm. To permit any
such thing would be a sin and a shame. There might be
some question as to why Oliver Graith had been sent on
board the Lively Peg. But as to why these jewels had
come there, there could be no question at all. Lancelot
Ambrose had received a direct mission — to save them from
an ignorant prodigal. Even the loss of the cash-box had
been providential. But for that he would never have
touched Oliver’s sleeve; and had he not touched Oliver’s
sleeve, the diamonds and the rubies might as well, and bet-
ter, have remained at the roots of the apple-trees.

50

GOLDEN BELLS.

In short, there is only one time for everything — even for
murder. And that time is now.

CHANGE THE FOUETH.

OP SPOTS AND HIDES.

There was scarcely a male creature in Forth tyre who
could give a coherent account of what had taken place
only the day before— not so much because of their collect-
ive weakness of brain, for which Forth tyre was by no
means conspicuous in comparison with other places, as be-
cause of the strength of the liquor consumed there, for
which it was conspicuous in a very remarkable degree.
Even Tom Folwarth felt a sort of buzzing in the head and
a red-hot sensation in the throat on waldng; for, tliough
he had been absent at the beginning of the feast, he had
dropped in toward the close, and had to work pretty hard
to make up for lost time. In short, the coming of age had
been celebrated very manfully indeed by everybody con-
cerned, barring the heir.

However, he felt but little the worse after he had dipped
his head and shoulders into the water-trough that he kept
for his four-footed customers ; and then he bethought him
that he had a mare to sell. It is sad to have to record, in
the case of so decent-hearted a fellow, that the two guin-
eas had somehow or another gone as utterly as Zion Farm.
There seemed a fatality about the money of a Graith, and
there certainly had been a good many guineas drunk last
night. Still two seemed beyond one man’s proportion,
even in Forthtyre.

But there w^as the mare. So, feeling sheepish about
meeting the ladies, he thought he could not do better than
ride her over to Eedruth, to see what could be done with
her. He would not feel quite so shame- faced if he could
bring the ladies back a trifle of capital ; for, as they were
they had literally nothing left of their own but the clothes
they wore.

Mrs. Graith and Susan Ambrose shared the same cham-
ber— there is no need to say with what bodily discomfort,
since it was where Tom Folwarth used to go to bed on oc-
casional nights, mostly in the winter, when there was noth-
ing on hand to be attempted or done. For, unlike the
blacksmith of another village, the more industrious he was,
the less he slept, and vice versa ; while his unquestionable
power of looking the whole world (except young ladies) in
the face was assuredly not due to being out of debt or
danger. Susan also had her flt of shame for being the last
to wake; she had hoped to be up and making things de-
cently comfortable for Oliver’s mother, and felt that she

GOLDEN BELLS.

51

had no right to be sleeping at all while Mrs. Graith was
waking alone to the blackness of this new day.

But, though the widow’s eyes looked red and weary, tell-
ing their own tale, there was a softness that was next
neighbor to a smile in them as she bade Susan good-morn-
ing.

“ I have slept beautifully, my dear,’’ she said. “ I am
sure everybody is very kind.”

The girl contrived to answer her with a real smile,
though it was wonderful how she did it, her eyes were so
full of tears. She had never guessed before that the elder
woman might be the stronger of the two — at least from her
ignorant standpoint, for of course it is obvious that a
woman who could look and speak like that, before break-
fast, after losing everything that makes life worth living,
and having a sleepless night besides, must be a born fool.

Perhaps, however, she would not have been quite so fool-
ish but for something she had heard, either from one of the
birds of the air who carry such matters or from the bailiff,
that her old friend Lancelot Ambrose, who was Susan’s
father, was the cause of the catastrophe. She foresaw
worse trouble than had even ^ et befallen, and was reach-
ing out her hand to one who would soon need a friend even
more than she. To be ruined and homeless was bad enough
— but to be the cause ! I believe she had been thinking
more of Susan than of Oliver as she lay awake all through
the night ; I am sure she had not been thinking of herself
at all.

“ Don’t fret about Oliver,” she said, following her own
thoughts — “he is very brave and very strong; and who
knows but what happens to a man is always the best for
him? I don’t feel half so anxious about him now he has
nothing to spend; and they aren’t good company, aren’t
the lads here; not but what I’m afraid I’ve thought over-ill
of Tom. Perhaps we always do make mistakes, when we
think ill. I’m not going to think ill of anybody, my dear —
anybody in the world ; nor must you, whatever you hear.
Ah, I expect life’s a hard thing— for the men.”

Susan, in blissful ignorance as yet of what she meant, was
none the less touched to the heart — the greater sufferer, it
seemed to her, was trying to comfort the lesser.

“Yes, Mrs. Graith,” she answered, as cheerfully as she
knew how, “ we mustn’t be afraid about Oliver; he is going
to fight, and win; we mustn’t let him feel that we’ve been
mistrusting him, when he comes home. Why, there isn’t
a braver or a stronger lad in Porthtyre! He’s climbed the
Gull Pock without a rope; he’s tHrpwn Tom Polwartli;
he’s—”

52

GOLDEN BELLS. '

The widow could not help a broader, yet still an April,
smile.

“ He’s got his heart in the right place, I do believe. I
wished once he could have put it in a better place; but
that’s over now.”

Susan colored, left Mrs. Graith with a kiss, and went into
the kitchen. What a bachelor's muddle it was, to be sure
— simply a lumber-room of the smithy, which had not been
turned out for countless years. There was neither table
nor chair; but there was any number of old barrels, more
or less empty, of multifarious contents; a little of broken
instruments ; a whole heap of ancient horseshoes ; hopeless
relics of condemned hardware; broken glass; and more
odds and ends indescribable than one could count on a mid-
summer day. The woman’s heart in Susan brimmed over
with pity for the man who lived in such a kitchen and
such a bedroom — not realizing the delicious freedom from
worry that the very name of chaos implies.

But another well was opened in that same heart when
she saw that the best-conditioned barrel had been worked
into the middle of the brick floor, and a loaf, with a large
jug of milk set thereon, while the Titanic fireplace was
filled with thorns. It was the rudest of hospitality ; but it
was hospitality all the same. She looked round in some
hope of being able to thank the host, if with nothing better
than a smile; but he was not to be seen, and for good
reason why — a negotiable mare. So, before Mrs. Graith
could appear, she set to work on chaos ; and presently chaos
began to give way.

Then she dropped sparks of tinder on the thorns, and
evoked a fragrant crackle which soon burst into a blaze
which, to people unused to that sort of fire, looked des-
tined to dispose of chaos in another sort of way. Then,
finding a comparatively uncracked kettle, she boiled a
mess of bread porridge; so that when Mrs. Graith left the
room that Tom Polwarth styled his bedchamber, and any
moderately decent hog would not have condescended to
call a st}^, things were still bad enough, but not in quite
such polar contrast as before to the comfortable neatness
of Zion Farm.

After breakfast, each pretending to eat in order to sat-
isfy the other:

” We needn’t think of paying Tom Polwarth for one
night’s lodging,” said Susan; “but I suppose we can’t go
on turning the poor fellow out of his — bedroom, for good
and all. I'll tell you what we must do, till Oliver comes
home. I am your daughter, you know ”

“ Ah— I wish you were, my dear!” sighed Mrs. Graith;

I wish you were!”

GOLDEN BELLS.

53

“ And something better; for if I was your real daughter,
what could I do?”

Mrs. Graith was silent; they were getting on delicate
ground.

” But I can do this now; and I will,” said Susan. “ No;
I won’t tell you yet, mother. I’m not so sure it can be done
—it depends. Only, be as sure as you live that we’re going
to be together till— till he comes home.”

“ You mustn’t promise that, Susan!” said Mrs. Graith,
knowing what she knew.

” What? Don’t you want me?” cried Susan, in amaze.

“ God knows I do ! But ”

“ Then don’t talk nonsense. First, I’ll pay for our lodg-
ing after all; and then I’ll see.”

The payment was made in kind. First of all, the bed-
room, after an hour’s confusion, looked as if it had been
visited by a fairy. Then, while Mrs. Graith watched with
admiration the neatness of her pupil, the lumber-room be-
came, if not quite a kitchen, something like a decently ar-
ranged storeroom, swept and garnished to its own bewild-
ei-ment. Inspired by so congenial a sight, Mrs. Graith
was seduced into helping the final polish ; and, having thus
provided her with an occupation that may always be made
to last just as long as one pleases, Susan put her shawl over
her head and, avoiding the village, betook herself to Zion
Farm, much meditating on the way.

She was a shy girl, and a bailiff, as the representative of
all the earthly powers that be — powers great enough to de-
prive a man of house and land, and using their might like
a bowelless machine — was a being to strike awe. But her
errand required an interview with whoever might be in
possession ; so shyness had to give way. Crossing the yard,
now all trampled about and in dire confusion, and turning
a deaf ear to her neglected pullets, she knocked gently at
the door. After waiting patiently for some minutes she
tapped again ; and then again, after waiting a little impa-
tiently for a few more. For she had not quite as yet
achieved the patience of Mrs. Graith ; and possibly never
would, were she to live thrice as long.

At last the door was slowly unbarred (it had never been
barred by the Graiths — not even by old Oliver) and opened
inch by inch; and there stood before her a short, almost
dwarfish, nearly coffee-colored person, with thick and
stooping shoulders that nearly met in front of his chest, a
bush of grizzled hair, a thick but perfectly straight nose,
dull eyes of glowing black, and — what was not quite so
strange in Porthtyre as elsewhere, which had familiar
knowledge of French]nen and Portuguese— a full black
beard. Only this black beard was glossy and silken ; not

54

GOLDEN BELLS.

like the scrubbing-brush of Captain Vasco. Susan had
never set eyes on such a beard before. His clothes were
shabby to the last degree, shining with grease and diversi-
fied by ill-mated patches. The eyebrows were busliy and
overhanging, giving the upper portion of his face a chronic
scowl. However, it was not to be expected that a bailiff
should be altogether as other men.

“Who are you?” asked he, without removing his hat,
which, being of quite exceptional height, made his stature
full five feet one. No Porthtyre girl had ever set eyes on
so short a man — Susan herself looked down on the crown
of his liat from full two inches more, and, bailiff as he was,
she already felt less shy. Men were a good deal measured
by inches in Porthtyre, instead of — as in all civilized places
— solely by the number of their virtues and the weight of
their brains. Even women in that barbarous parish liked
a man to look like a man.

“Are you the bailiff?” asked she.

“ A question isn’t an answer, ’ ’ said he, testily. ‘ ‘ I asked
■who are you. And who are you — I ask again?”

“ My name is Susan Ambrose,” said she.

“Oh. Susan Ambrose. Susan means Lily. You don’t
look much like your name — but who does, ever? And Am-
brose— that means thief; and you don’t look like that,
either. But a name isn’t an answer. Who are you ?”

The ways of bailiffs were unquestionably queer. But
once more, a power of five foot one was not to be judged
like common men.

“ Susan Ambrose, ” she repeated, a little hotly. “That
mayn’t be much; but I’m nothing more. ”

“ Oh— a lily with thorns, eh? Very well. You are noth-
ing but Susan Ambrose, then. And what do you want with
me?”

‘ ‘ Only to ask— is the man who has got Zion Farm going
to live there; or who?”

‘ ‘ I shall never learn your grammar. But perhaps that
is because there is none. At the least, it is queer. Can
you parse?”

“ Parse?” asked poor Susan; “ I do not know — but I can
make butter, and I can keep things clean.”

“ Indeed?”

“Yes— indeed.”

“Good. Then I will tell you, yes. He is going to live
there, I believe— that ‘ Who which what ’ lias got Zion
Farm.”

“ He is? Then he’ll have to have a dairy — and a dairy'
maid ”

“And she is to be called Lily Thief — I mean Susan Am-
brose— eh? He will have a nretty maid, then — that

55

GOLDEN BELLS,

‘ which who ’ has got Zion Farm.” Cocking up his beard,
the scowl relaxed into a leer.

Being at once both a bailiff and a dwarf, it could not
matter whether he leered or scowled. And she noticed
the impertinence the less, inasmuch as compliments were
by no means included among the social currency of Porth-
tyre. He must have felt snubbed by her want of anger —
at least he ought to have been.

‘‘I have minded the dairy at this farm,” she said, “for
three years, and if he can find sweeter butter or riper
cheese in the parish, he’ll find what has never been found
before. ’ ’

‘ ‘ Aghe ! Medeaparh, PhoJcracordz I ’ ’

“ I don’t know French, sir,” pleaded Susan. “ But ”

“ ‘ Big say— little do.’ That is French; that is English;
that is all over the world. But — butter and cheese ; that
isn't everywhere. That must be seen to. Come and make
butter ; let me see. ’ ’

Susan asked for nothing better. She had already given
a passing sigh to those yellow cream pans, left to waste for
want of churning; so she promptly led the way to the
dairy, feeling as if she had been called to the rescue of
helpless friends.

“You have been here before,” said he. “Now don’t
say you have not, for you have ; and I hate lies. You
coufd not have known the way if you had not been here
before. ’ ’

She was not listening to him, however; she had thrown
off her shawl and was baring her arms. Butter-making
was real work in those days, and Susan’s arms were well
up to it, though not the less shapely. The bailiff, still with
his hat .on, watched the process as if he were waiting for
the projection of the philosopher’s stone.

At last, in due time, the first golden lump was brought
to light ; and the bailiff, putting on a pair of glasses with
silver rims, examined it as if he were trying to find a flaw
in a title deed.

“Yes; that is butter,” said he. He thrust his hand into
his breast and drew forth a very old netted purse, with
copper rings.

“ There!” said he, offering her six pennies, one by one.
“Nobody ought ever do anything for nothing; and you
have told me the truth; and for that it is worth while to
pay high.”

The man looked so poor and so shabby, and to have so
extravagant an estimate of the value of six* pennies, that
she handed them back again.

“Thank you,” she said; “you are very kind — but I’m
glad enough to have saved my poor cream.”

56

GOLDEN BELLS,

‘ ‘ True- -true, ’ ’ said he, absently counting the pennies
back into the purse. “What would you want for wages,
if you came here?”

“I wouldn’t want any for myself — only shelter and
meals. But I have a mother ”

“ Oh — a Mrs. Ambrose, eh?”

“No. Mrs. Graith. She is not really my mother ”

“Not your mother? Then why did you tell me she
was? Why did you say what is not true?” He spoke
in a way that would have sounded alarming in a bigger
man.

‘ ‘ But she has been one to me for years ; and I call her so
— now. She is Mrs. Graith, sir: and yesterday she was
mistress here— where I want to he maid.”

“What — the mother of that foolish young scamp ”

“ No, ” said Susan, whose shyness became at once a thing
forgotten, “ of Oliver Graith, if you please. You are here
to take your better’s goods; not to call them names.”

She had never found out that she had a temper; but she
knew it now ; and the bailiff knew it too.

He also had shown signs of a temper; but, finding him-
self faced, his scowl relaxed, and he gave a grunt instead of
a growl.

“Ah, but you have told me a lie at last!” he suddenly
exclaimed, while Susan was clearing the churn, as if he had
all at once found something he had been looking for — “I
thought there must be one lie ! You are daughter of Lance-
lot Ambrose of Redruth — I see it with my eye!”

“ When did I say I was not?” asked Susan, beginning to
feel a tingling in the fingers.

“ When? Why, when I asked you who you were.”

“ I never ”

“ Yes. you did though. I heard it with my ears ”

The word “ears” was almost irresistible to her fingers,
especially when she saw how thick and red they hung
under his hat brim.

‘ ‘ And you are the daughter of that runaway thief,
who ”

Up to this moment I have labored under the belief that
Susan Ambrose was the gentlest of girls, as incapable of
anything unladylike as any duchess in the land. I could
no more have dreamed of what happened than I could
have dreamed of her failing to be stanch to a friend. And
then, what made it a thousand times worse, the bailiff was
old enough td be her father, was almost a head shorter and
much weaker than she, and did not look fit to be touched
with a pair of tongs — much less by a woman’s hand.

In short, it was his ear, instead of her fingers, that tin'

GOLDEN BELLS,

57

gled ; and his hat was off at last and soaking in a milk-pail,
leaving nothing behind but a bald and philosophic crown.

I know not which stands most amazed —he, she, or I.

* * * * *

‘‘ Akh! She is a tigress — a tigress!” he cried, glaring at
her and wringing his hands. ” She is come here to murder
me. For the love of Heaven, take my hat out of the milk ;
it will spoil 1”

He must have meant the milk, for the hat had been
already beyond spoiling.

She was already ashamed of herself, but she could not
leave her work undone.

” Will you beg my father’s pardon?” asked she.

“Yes,” said he, looking at her hand and rubbing his ear.
“Saints and angels, how strong!”

“ And Oliver Oraith’s, for ”

“For calling him foolish and scamp? Oh, yes; he is a
most respectable, most wise young man. ’ ’

“ And mine, for saying I said what I never did say?”

“ I do indeed.”

“ Then here is your hat,” said she, lifting it by its ex-
treme edge out of the pail, and wiping it with a duster.

‘ ‘ And — good-day. ’ ’

“Wait a minute, though! You are to look after my
dairy, and you shall have all you can make by it — no; I
will give you even the whole half of what you can make
by it, for your wage. ’ ’

“ Your dairy ?”she asked, almost letting the hat fall into
the churn.

“ Who else’s?” he asked, sharply. “The truth! Do not
say I am not Nicephorus Bedrosian, because I am. And
you know !”

“ The new master of the farm?”

“ Of the farm — and of youP''

She returned to Mrs. Graith with her brain in a state as
if it were she who had had her ears boxed, and not he. He
was a strange sort of master, that was clear; and she felt
a little afraid of him, and wondered how an outlandish
creature like that would get on at Porthtyre — not very
well, seemingly, unless he confined his attentions in the
way of bullying to girls ; and perhaps not even then. He
was grotesque, and he was ill-conditioned, and he was mean
— qualities that do not usually make for popularity, unless
their owner be a prince or a millionaire ; and he probably
knew as little of farming or fishing as he did of dairy work
— qualities that make straight in the opposite way. It
would surely break Mrs. Graith’ s heart to see the hands
into which the family heritage had fallen — and his hands
were the best part of him.

58

GOLDEN BELLS.

Tom Polwarth had not returned from Eedruth by the
time she got back ; though the butter and the rest of the
business had kept her long. Mrs. Graith had finished
clearing up, and was standing at the door of the smithy,
looking up and down the street, shading her eyes with her
hand

“ Oh, my dear!” she cried; ‘’where have you been this
age? If anything happened to you, it would be worst of
all!”

“Nonsense, mother!” said Susan; “ what should happen
to me?”

“Ah! that’s what we all thought yesterday ; but now
we ”

“Now everything is to be all right again, for you and
me. I’ve got some good news.”

“Oh!”

“ Yes, mother; I’ve got a place, at first asking.”

“And you call that good news; you, a young lady ”

“ Indeed I’m not. I’m a dairymaid. And what better
could one be?”

“Where?”

“ Only think — at Zion Farm!”

‘ ‘ Oh — oh — oh !’ ’ cried the widow. ‘ ‘ And you that should
have been mistress — you to be — and all ! No, don't tell me
that; I’d sooner work my fingers to the bone. Oh, what
would Oliver say?”

Susan had never thought of Mrs. Graith’ s taking her
news in that way, and her face fell. But she said, pres-
ently, with a kiss:

“Just what I said to him; make the best of things as
they are. You mustn’t fret about that, dear. Think — I
might have had to go miles away; and now I sha’n’t be
outside a walk, and I shall be with you a dozen times a
day. I don’t expect to live there ; we might have a cottage
together, and me go out to my work while you see to
things at home. Dear mother, I shall be miserable if ”

“ I know — if I am. There, then, I won’t be. You are a
dear, good girl, Susan; and if only ”

“Oliver would come home? But he will^ mother; I
know that, too.”

“ If you really do think that, dear ”

“ I really do.”

“Then— he will.”

But enough of fools and their folly; as if everybody did
not know that, instead of making the best of things, really
intellectual people find no better way of showing their
superiority than by making the worst of them. Just then
came the most timid of taps on the door, as if a mouse

GOLDEN BELLS. - 59

were wanting to enter, and doubted whether the cat
might not be inside.

‘‘Come in!” cried Susan, wondering who could tap so
humbly and so feebly in all Porthtyre.

But so far from being a mouse, and that a frightened
one, it was Tom Polwarth, red fully as much from bashful-
ness as from exercise. But when he looked round his own
kitchen he turned almost pale.

“Why, what’s been a-doing here?”

“Nothing that I know of,” said Susan, innocently.
“ What should there be?”

“ I shouldn’t have known my own kitchen— that’s all.”

“Of course you wouldn’t, because you never had one
before.”

“ And wherever I’m to find all my things ”

Alas for the gratitude of man 1 Here had two women
been slaving to put those very things to rights, and this
was their reward. But Susan only smiled. If men don’t
know what is good for them, women do— or, at least, they
think they do. While as for gratitude, they are quite
satisfied with deserving what they assuredly never re-
ceive. Putting things to rights is bound to be its own re-
ward.

“I’ve sold your mare,” said he. “Times are bad, just
now, round Eedruth; but I’ve made thirty pound. B}’’
the devil’s own luck, the party I sold her to never spotted
that fault in the off hind hock; or it must have been five
pound off, if it was a penny. And here’s the money, mis-
tress ; all in gold. They wanted me to take a note of Am-
brose’s, but ”

“You’ve done splendidly, Mr. Polwarth!” interrupted
Susan, hastily. “Thirty pounds! Why, it’s a fort-
une ’ ’

“ And he, perhaps, starving!” cried the widow.

“ No, mother,” said Susan. “ The best thing for him is
for you to be above want. I wish he could know it;
but we must make the best of things. And there is Mr.
Polwarth, the best friend we’ve found. The best thing
to be done for us, Oliver and all, is for you to live on
the money till I’ve made a fortune with my butter and
cheese ”

“There’s a better way than that,” said Tom, coloring
again.

“ Than making a fortune?”

“No; than spending one. If you ladies could put up at
the smithy— there's room enough — you’d get lodging for
nought, which ’d be a something toward; and you’d be as
welcome as the flowers in May. I’m not much about, and
’tis pity a roof should be wasted, like this here.”

60

GOLDEN BELLS.

“I must think that out,” said Susan, after a glance at
Mrs. Graith that told her it was for her to take command.
“No, it would never do. You’d be swept out of house
and home ; for the first thing we should buy would be a
broom.”

Tom did look a little rueful at the thought, as he looked
round at what had been done in a few hours. But he stuck
to his colors, red predominating still.

“Oh, Miss Susan— I dare say I might get used to
that ”

‘ ‘ Never. And then there’s something else we could never
get used to. Don’t you see that Oliver Graith’s mother
couldn’t have it said about the place that she wasn’t paying
for the 1 oof over her? No ; that would never do. We must
go somewhere where we can be let pay.”

Tom Polwarth gave yet another look round. He loved
liberty— none better; and he did not love comfort, because
he had not seen such a thing since he was born. But it
was a pleasant thing to see the girl standing, like a good
fairy in a story book, in the midst of order ; and he said at
last, with a rub of the forehead :

“Where you’ll be let pay? I don’t like it. Miss Susan;
but may be I might get used to your doing that too.”

“ Ah— if you could do that ”

She was certainly not showing herself so thoughtful and
so prudent a young woman as she had once promised to be.
Next to Oliver himself, the blacksmith had the worst char-
acter for unsteadiness in the whole parish. But her heart
was in the humor to go out to all scapegraces, black sheep,
and vagabonds ; and here was the one man who had stood
up for Oliver, wliatever else he might be. Then she felt
full of pity for the man himself, deprived of the inestima-
ble advantage, as she conceitedly put it, of womankind;
and what an excellent thing it would be for Mrs. Graith to
have anybody or anything to occupy her — even a little
worry would not be a bad thing, and, like a homeopathic
globule, keep her from worrying more. Susan Ambrose
anticipated the paradox of Hahnemann.

“And we can do something to the house besides sweep-
ing,” said she, warming to the notion. “As I’ve got a
situation, we needn’t hoard our money too hard.”

“You’ve got a situation. Miss Susan?” asked Tom, a
little blankly; for, good fellow as he was, more or less,
there is unquestionably a difference between letting lodg-
ings to a lone widow, and letting them to a lone widow
plus a pretty girl.

“Yes, but not far off; only ”

“ But who are they?’ ’ asked Mrs. Graith. “ You haven’t
told me who they are ’ ’

GOLDEN BELLS.

61

‘‘I dare say they’re very nice people when you come to
know them,” said Susan, not caring to be pressed too
closely on that score. “ I haven’t seen much of them— so
far.”

‘‘ No. They can’t be nice, Susan. Nobody could be nice
who’d turn Oliver out of his own.”

“Lord!” cried Tom; “you don’t say you’ve taken a
place up at Zion Farm?”

“ As dairymaid. And I’m to have half what I make;
and ”

Tom Polwarth’s face fell— yards.

“ Lord save us! If you haven’t taken service with Old
Nick!” he cried.

“ Why, what in the world do you mean? I didn’t quite
catch the old gentleman’s name, but it was a long way
longer than that — though it did begin with something like
Nick, now I call it to mind.”

“ Old Nick — that’s what they call him up at Eedruth;
they were telling of him this very day. He’s not an En-
glishman ; nor yet a Frenchman ; nor yet a Spaniard ; nor
yet a Portugee. And he eats pig-meat; so he’s not so
much as a Jew. He talks to himself at times in a sort of
jabber that sounds, they say, like a horse that’s took all
of a sudden to swear. He came to Eedruth all at once,
from nobody knows where. He don’t look like a man.
He looks round the edge of a penny piece, and don’t
spend enough in the town to feed a fly ; but he has a house
filled up to every ceiling with lumps of gold so close that a
midge couldn’t creep between. John Dixon saw him once
sitting at the top of the steeple, cross-legged, grinning at
the moon. All the young ones, when they see him com-
ing, set up a squeal. Jenny Loar went into a fit to see
him in the churchyard, hopping over the tombs.”

“Heavens!” cried Mrs. Graith, throwing up her hands.

“ ’Tis he, they say, that broke Ambrose’s. Lord, I’ve
heard tell of Old Nick of Eedruth these twelve months —
and now he’s here! Miss Susan — don’t you trouble about
money. I’ll just work the skin off my bones sooner than
you go there. He’s unked. Nancy Loar, Jenny’s sister,
was carrying a mug of cider up the street when Old Nick
came round the corner — and if she didn’t drop the mug to
smash, cider and all, may I never taste cider again. She
told me herself; and her own mother keeps the Blue
Bear.”

“Horrible!” exclaimed Mrs. Graith. What is he —
this man?”

“Some say he’s the Wandering Jew; but that won’t
wash, because of the pig-meat. Some say he’s found the

62 GOLDEN BELLS.

field ofiicer’s stone. Some say he’s a — wizard. And there,
I reckon, you be.”

“Susan,” said Mrs. Graith, with decision, “you will
have nothing to do with this horrible man!”

“ Oh, I know how to manage wizards,” said Susan, very
meekly, looking at her own hands.

♦ ♦ ♦ 5jc * :jc

Thus began Susan’s service with Nicephorus Bedrosian —
“Old Nick,” as he was not unnaturally called by people
who are too lazy to do justice to eight syllables when the
first of them will serve.

In her estimate of how he would be received at Porth-
tyre she was extravagantly wrong. To be sure, he was not
often there ; but, whenever he did make a fiying visit, he
was received with anything but contumely. He was in the
most unassailable position that a man can hold — he was
feared ; and without a shadow of cause, which signifies in-
tensified fear. For nobody fears a flesh-and-blood high-
wayman as one fears a fleshless and bloodless ghost ; and
as soon as t)ne can give reason for the fear that is in one,
courage returns.

Tom Polwarth’s whisper of wizard, caught up at Eed-
ruth, ran, always under breath, through Porthtyre. It
was rather a belief than an idea. But the West Country
has not even yet given up its faith in what it does not un-
derstand; and to have doubted witchcraft in Porthtyre,
eighty years ago, would have been almost as bad as to deny
that Satan’s hoofs are cloven. And why not, when, after
centuries of progressive enlightenment, new clairvoyant,
or chirologist, and so forth, is but old witch writ large —
barring the stake, which is perhaps a trifle over-severe,
and the horsepond, which assuredly has not ceased to be
deserved? And so Nicephorus, otherwise Old Nick, used
to traverse his lands without so much as a hoot, much
less a stone, tempting as his hat, washed in milk, might
be.

His inexplicable object in turning farmer added to the
mystery. Indeed, from being the best managed farm in
the parish, it became the very worst, except in the dairy
department, into which Susan Ambrose threw herself as if
the fate of the world depended upon her getting the largest
possible quantity of butter out of the smallest possible
quantity of cream. Happily, Old Nick did not think of
selling the cows; so that not only was Susan not stinted,
but she was obliged, in her own interest, to do the work of
three ordinary dairymaids. No doubt she had much, and
might have had more, of the help of the blacksmith, who
suddenly developed a remarkable bent in the direction of
cattle. But she gave him no encouragement — indeed, she

GOLbm BELLS.

63

snubbed rather, when he took to hanging about the farm.
And, as he was never to be seen when the farmer himself
paid one of his flying visits, she got even more credit than
she altogether deserved, and Old Nick congratulated him-
self more and more on the good bargain he had made every
time that he came.

Not that when he did come Susan saw much of him.
Sometimes, even, she thought that her strength of arm had
made him a little afraid of her; and doubtless it was this
that made her so little afraid of him. He would drive over
in a gig, and then mostly spend his time in long and soli-
tary rambles— another eccentricity in times when no sane
being ever took bodily exercise without an aim. Nowadays
half his oddities would mean nothing — he might be ento-
mologist, botanist, archaeologist, geologist ; anything from
a student of blue bottles to a man bent upon seeing how
many miles he could walk in an hour for how many hours
in the day. If he had only gone out at night, people could
have understood it better; because night was the time
when people went out themselves. In many places, no
doubt, the wizard- like proceeding would have been to ram-
ble at midnight ; but Porthtyre was Forth tyre.

There were places, indeed, where a man who had got
possession of a fine farm, and left it to take care of itself,
might have been set down as a little crazy. But nobody
ever thought that— his outlandishness protected him from
any suspicion of that kind.

But he was naturally talked about — always somewhat
under the breath — a great deal. He was beginning to
rival public interest in the weather and the moon. Once a
young fisherman, bolder if not more curious than the
rest, followed him, at a respectful distance, on one of his
rambles ; and his report puzzled the parish more than ever.
Old Nick, as well as the shortness of his legs allowed,
plodded up, in spite of bog and heather, some half-dozen
eminences, on each of which he, with infinite labor, made
a rough heap of loose stones. Then, with a strange-looking
br^en instrument to his eye, he turned about to various
points of the compass, and from time to time made marks
with a pencil upon a piece of paper.

The report was not a little alarming. For it so happened
that a little affair of importation, in which Tom Polwarth,
among others, was concerned, had been fixed for that
night ; and there were some who advised postponement
unless the others would undertake to scatter the cairns.
One recalled to mind the mysterious loss of the Lively Peg,
and wondered whether Old Nick had put up a cairn any-
where before that memorable gale. However, the business
was too urgent to give up even for so strong a thing as a

64

GOLDEN BELLS.

fancy. Moreover, there was extra peril; for somehow,
ever since the breakup of Ambrose’s bank, the coastguard
had shown unprecedented activity. Whether the activity
of the coastguard was one of the many results of the
smash, I know not ; but so, at any rate, things were.

Thus it was under many foreboding shadows that Tom
Polwarth and the rest applied themselves to the business
in hand. And when they returned never had any ad-
venture proved so profitable within living memory — not
even when the bank flourished, and Captain Yasco was to
the fore.

However it might be as between the bank and the coast-
guard, there was, even to the most illogical of minds, an
intimate connection between this unprecedentedly prosper-
ous adventure and the cairns. All the circumstances im-
pressed this close relation upon the public mind — the cause
of the previous anxiety and the startling profit of the
“run.” Hoots and stones, indeed! Why, the first time
that a Porthtyre fisherman met Old Nick after that, it was
with a pull at the foreloc^k and a rugged good- day — an-
swered with a savage “ Good f No— it’s as bad a day as
bad can be.”

It would be long to tell how the visits of the new master
of Zion Farm became identified with the daily life of
Porthtyre; and it w^ould be strange as well as long, because
he spent no money and fewer words— if less than nothing
there can be.

Whenever he came somebody was told off to watch how
many cairns he built, and where ; and to which quarter of
the wind he turned his instrument of brass ; and a dozen
other momentous things.

Once a fisherman fell ill ; and his wife came begging to
Old Nick to make him .well again, Old Nick answered her
in strange words that sounded like swearing, and the poor
woman went off crestfallen. But it is a fact that in no
more than a fortnight that man was well. Cause and
effect, once more.

Then it was amazing how many eggs his hens laid ; how
quickly came his butter; how dutiful of their cream were
his three cows. No doubt there was Susan; but of course
any fool could do as much with Old Nick at her elbow.
Nobody would have been astonished to see his cornfields
sprout of themselves.

It was all rather awful, no doubt. But when, no more
than five days after one of his visits, a West-Indiaman
went to pieces on the Gull Eock, losing her whole crew and
not a penn’orth of her cargo, so that Porthtyre gained
enough to keep everybody, with reasonable economy, for
a year, it became more than awful. “Old Nick!” Men

GOLDEN BELLS.

65

and women ceased to name his name; like the Yesidis, or
devil-worshipers of the East, wlio hold that he who says so
much as “ the deuce !” blasphemes.

Meanwhile Susan put her back into her work, and
worked on.

CHANGE THE FIFTH.

OF SKY.

It is not, as a rule, the act of a wise man to go to sleep
when h(^ is alone with a man who has injured him. But
Oliver Graith, though he had attained the age of responsi-
ble manhood, had not yet attained the age of wisdom — if
there be such an age. So it was hardly his fault that he
failed yet again to go to sleep in one world and to wake up
in another.

The first sound he heard on waking was the most natural
that could possibly have come to him— in a dream.

” Hullo!” said a voice that was at once (dream wise) both
familiar and strange; “so it’s you again!”

Oliver rubbed his eyes. Yes ; he had not dreamed that
he was on board the Lively Peg ; he had not dreamed that
he was in company with Susan’s father; and so, no doubt,
he did not dream that he w^as also in company with the
young gentleman who had been in command of the press-
gang.

The young gentleman did his best to look as stern as
an admiral; and, considering his temporary disadvantages,
succeeded very fairly well, but for a twinkle of the eye.

“You’re a smart fellow!” said he. “A man that can
slip out of a boat's crew, and take a header into the sea in
the middle of a channel fog, ought to serve King Geoi%e —
and, bless your eyes, so he shall. Thompson, go below and
search the wreck, and report to me; and, bless you, look
alive. What’s this cutter? And where’s the rest of the
crew, besides you two? One of you seems the worse for
wear. No, no, it’s no use your squinting at the water.
You don’t give me the slip twice the same way.”

It was true enough that Oliver had cast one rueful look
at hu friend the sea; for he knew’ w^hat he was in for, and
it was bitterly hard to be carried off against his will just
when Fortune had so miraculously tossed into his hands
the wherewithal to buy back the farm, take up life over
again by the right end, and, like a good genius, make
everybody happy. Indeed, when one comes to think of it,
it was cruelly hard — it was an arch-joke of a fiend.

“No, sir,” said he; “I don’t belong to this cutter, nor
she— poor thing!— to moj and I’m a farmer^ when J’m

66

GOLDEN BELLS,

ashore. I came aboard, as I suppose you did, seeing a ves-
sel in distress; and ”

“ All right, my man. Never mind what you are ashore.
You’re sailor enough at sea. As for this man here, as he
seems damaged, we can land TiimN

“No, sir— don’t do that!” exclaimed Ambrose. “I’m
not so much damaged as that comes to. “I’m not a sea-
man like him,” he said, pointing to poor Oliver, “but I
can help the purser— I understand accounts ; or the sur-
geon ; or any thing— I want nothing better than to serve
the king!”

“Why, you talk like a land lawyer!” said the little mid-
shipman, looking over the big man. “Arum thing — a
land-lubber rigged out in Jack’s old clothes wanting to
keep the ship’s books because he funks going ashore! But
it don’t do to be particular these times. Well, Thomp-
son?”

“ The cutter’s in ballast, sir.”

“ Any papers?”

“No, sir.”

“That’ll do. Now then — heave the big ’un into the stern,
and keep an eye on the young ’un. Let go !”

So, with malicious, yet not wholly unkindly triumph,
this energetic young officer, with the delight of one school-
boy who has at least outwitted another, recovered his
prize. No doubt he had his own juvenile opinions of the
character of the wreck, and of at least one of her crew —
the one who had been so strangely eager to enter a service
which, though glorious, and even popular among those
who were safe out of it, found but fow voluntary candi-
dates for a share in its glories. However, history and Mr.
Dibdin have conspired to cover the era of stealing free
men, of flogging into duty, and delivering them over to
contractors, with a halo of Nelson and splendor; and — so
let it be. The slaves, flogged and starved and Anally
chucked away as they were, did not their duty, for they
truly had none, but ten thousand times more; and, with
really glorious stupidity, got to be proud of their chains.
But, for all that, it was not usual for an obviously educated
man, like Lancelot Ambrose, to beg for the chains from
which a seaman recoiled.

However, exhaustive investigation was no part of the
programme of a press-gang. In an hour from his throat’s
escape from being cut in his sleep, both Lancelot Ambrose
and Oliver Graith were on board the Seamew, a flne frig-
ate somewhat short of hands by reason of desertions and
scurvy, and on her way the admiralty alone knew
whither.

GOLDEN BELLS.

67

For some days Oliver Graith lived in a lethargy. His
spirit was not broken; but it was numbed. He dozed
during his hours of rest, but he got no wholesome sleep—
not even so much as the customs of active service allowed.
For his repose was broken into pieces by vague visions of
impossible cities, of palaces and temples heaped up with
wealth immeasurable. And at the same time he saw the
old farm overrun with weeds and brambles, and his mother
wandering, homeless and helpless, among piles of gold and
diamonds to which she was blind. Nor was Susan, in one
wild way oi* another, absent from his dreams. He was un-
used to the luxury of dreaming, of which indeed the en-
ervating delight is a luxury granted only in its fullness
to an unenviable few; and he found nothing but the
misery of nightmare in waking to the sensation that
he was wading knee-deep in golden sand or struggling
with ruby waves. How he got through his day ’s duty, or
what he was thought of among his mates he never knew.
A common sailor— and yet, in knowledge and possession
able to buy up all Porthtyre! It was well for him that he
was not maddened instead of merely numbed ; that bodily
exhaustion hindered brain-fever.

It was singular, but for the instinct that makes men
guard their gold before their life and even before their
reason, that the wealth he wore in and beneath his meager
clothing remained concealed. However, a service in which
many a woman contrived to keep her sex a secret might
well enable that instinct to preserve for a man what men
prize more than a woman — her honor. But by the time
that sleep, however broken, had done some part of its
work, and thoughts became actively poignant in propor-
tion to the strength of the body to bear them, his secret be-
came an anxiety.

During the depth of his lethargy he had not realized that
Lancelot Ambrose had voluntarily become his shipmate.
But now, his eyes and his ears waking up, he became
aware not only that this was so, but that, even in this sliort
while, the superior education and the business aptitudes of
the ex banker had made him a marked man. Ambrose’s
injuries had saved him from being put at once to ordinary
duty and had obtained for him some particular attention ;
and the result was that he was recognized as somebody
who might prove officially useful, and therefore whom it
was inexpedient to question too closely. The naval con-
tractor was a familiar personage in those days ; and be-
tween the great man and the suspected jail-bird the differ-
ence was too slight for the naval mind, unused to drawing
subtle distinctions, to perceive.

Indeed, it was on the log of the Seamew that was made

&OLDE]St BELLS.

that most remarkable of all recorded entries : that in such
latitude and longitude so and so, at such an hour, the frig-
ate going so many knots an hour, John Thompson, boat-
iswain’s mate, distinctly saw, while perfectly awake, the
knight bachelor, who supplied the Seamew with biscuits,
descend into a yawning crater enveloped in flames.

I forget the result of the consequent action for libel ; but
there is no doubt of an instinctive feeling on board the Sea^
mew that the new purser’s clerk only required wider scope
for his talents to receive the knightly accolade. In short,
there was but one way of accounting for his anxiety to
serve the king: to wit, pickings.

And, as very few persons were anxious to serve king and
Country for anything else, his position became more and
more intelligible every day.

There could not be much ordinary communication on
board so well disciplined a frigate as the Seamew, between
the forecastle and the purser’s office. But opportunities
arose, of which a man who knew what he was about was
able to take advantage, for an occasional interview with
Oliver Graith, in which repentance, and even remorse,
played prominent roles. After all, that unwitnessed inter-
view on board the poor, forgotten Peg — unwitnessed even by
the one who, thanks to good luck, had just managed to come
out of it alive — had been but a moment's temptation. No
doubt Lancelot Ambrose went down on his knees twice a
day in order to thank the Providence in which he so
strongly believed for having saved him from murder by
the interposition of a press-gang. At any rate, if he did
not do that, in respect of his sea-legs being not even yet in
first-rate condition, he endeavored to behave like a father
to the young man.

“Come,” he said, one day on one of these occasions:
“come; nobody ought to be down-hearted at one-and-
twenty. Things might be worse after all.”

He could never have obtained the position he had held
at Eedruth, and have come to hold the unlimited confi-
dence of far shrewder people than the Graiths, without
being a master of the art of saying platitudes in a genial
way.

“Well,” said Oliver, “I suppose they might be; but I
don’t see how.”

“ How old are you?” asked he.

“ Twenty-one, ” said Oliver, piqued into surprise. As if
all the world did not know that Oliver Graith had become
a man.

“Yes; twenty-one; and you might be five and-f orty —
like me. Eather late to begin life all over again, is forty-
five. Let me see~I’ ve always heard you’re pretty strong. ”

GOLDEN BELLS.

69

“I’ve given Tom Polwarth a fall.”

“Yes; Tom Polwarth; and you might have had a fall
yourself, like me; who’ll never be the same man again.
And— let me see again — what sort of a name did you have
in Porthtyre?”

Oliver colored— a little with anger, but mostly with
shame.

“ Well,” continued Ambrose, “ we’ll say none that was
much of a hardship to lose. Not your fault, of course;
young men will be young men, and one musn’t look for
gray heads on green shoulders. But still — you might have
bad the best and biggest name in the counties, like me.
And when that goes, after five-and-twenty years making
and keeping— it is hard. And— let me see again — you
haven’t to choose between a ship and a jail; like me.”

“ I hadn’t the choice given me,” said Oliver.

“ All the better for you. I had— and I chose the ship; I,
to whom a ship is hell — not what it is to you, a home. You
might have been a landsman ; you might have been a man
who goes to sea, not because he must, but because he
daren’t put his foot on shore.”

“You haven’t got a mother,” said Oliver, beginning to
understand Ambrose’s drift.

“And you might have had — none!” said Ambrose.
“And you might have had a daughter, whose face you’ll
never see again.”

It did strike Oliver that it might be a real misfortune to
never again see the face or hear the voice of Susan Am-
brose. Indeed, it struck him very keenly indeed.

“And,” Susan’s father went on, “you haven’t got to
feel that whatever trouble comes to your friends is all
through you — not through your fault, but still through
you. You’ve only got to bear your own troubles. You
might have had to bear everybody’s troubles — like me.”
And he sighed. “Thank God, Oliver Graith, that you are
you, and not — I.”

What was 01iv<)r to think; what to say? Put in this
manner, his own troubles did sink into nothingness as
compared with those of Lancelot Ambrose. That last sigh
w^ent to his heart. To feel that he had ruined others 1 That
would be dreadful indeed.

There that particular talk ended. But it bore its fruit
in some passing away of lethargy; some interest in duties
which, indeed, could not fail to interest a seaman who had
hitherto seen nothing more of his own life than can be
found in the cruises of a smuggling cutter. Yet still :

“ Do you remember trying to make out, the other day,”
said he, some three days later, “that things might be
worse— for me?”

70

GOLDEN BELLS,

“I don’t know that I do,” said Ambrose; “ but if I
did, I made out what’s true of all the world. I might
have broken my neck, you see, instead of only ribs and
collar-bones.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking. I wish there was any sort
of a way of putting one’s thoughts into one’s tongue.”

“ The only way of doing that, is to do it,” said Ambrose.

“I believe it’s my own fooleries,” Oliver broke out,
“that’s done half the mischief, and more. I don’t believe
Susan Ambrose could have been the daughter of any but
an honest man.”

Ambrose held out his hand. “Thank God!” said he,
turning his face away. The tears of the good are for
angels’, and no meaner eyes.

Oliver grasped the hand warmly, which returned the
pressure. Lancelot Ambrose could never have obtained
the position he had lost had he been unable to return in
kind an honest grasp of the hand.

“It’s not,” said Oliver, speaking low, and looking cau-
tiously round; “ it’s not my being pressed that troubles
me; it’s not losing Zion Farm; it’s not the wreck of poor
Peggy; it’s not parting from mother and Susan ; it’s ”

“Well?”

“It’s— this!” said he.

He took from somewhere between his skin and his shirt
something which Ambrose had not seen, and which made
him open his eyes, and then hastily close them. It was
the gem of the Dream City — the disk with the diamond.

Ambrose covered it quickly with his hand. “ Where did
you find— this?” he asked.

“On Hanno Sands; and what can be worse than to be
wandering about with things like that, when if one was
only ashore ”

Why did Oliver Graith reveal his secret to Lancelot Am-
brose, of all men in the world? Well— for once the answer
is easier than the question. He put himself in the other’s
place. He felt how he would feel if crushed with remorse,
and without a fiiend to trust him. In that case, how infi-
nitely precious beyond all gems a scrap of trust would be !
In short, he was a fool.

“On Hanno Sands?”

“Yes,” said Oliver. “I don’t know much about such
things; but enough to know that there’s enough where
that came from to buy back the old place, and set you and
Susan up again, too. ’ ’

“ Then these things— this thing, I mean — isn’t an heir-
loom? It wasn’t your father’s?”

It was an odd question from one to whom the disk was
supposed to be a new idea ; but it passed unnoticed.

GOLDEN BELLE.

71

“ An heirloom? No. Do you suppose I should be car-
rying about gold and diamonds and such like when my
own mother ”

“ Of course not. I mean — nothing at all. It takes one’s
breath away. HannoSandsI”

“ What do you suppose that’s worth, in a rough way?”
don’t know. But it’s awful, carrying it about at

sea.”

” I know it gives me nightmare.”

” You might fall overboard ; you might ”

“I never thought of that!” exclaimed Oliver, realizing
for the first time the effect of riches upon courage.
“Heaven alive! I shall be afraid to go aloft — and I’ve
got nowhere to stow the things ; and if I did, the Seamew
might go where Peg’s gone, poor thing. It’s awful ! what’s
to be done?”

“My dear boy— I’m hanged if I know. Of course it
isn’t for you,” he said, humbly, “to trust the like of me —
a runaway bankrupt. No, Oliver Graith, you’re not such
a fool.”

“ I don’t know, though,” said Oliver, not so much doubt-
fully as shyly, still conscious of that grasp of an unmis-
takably honest hand, and confusing his friend’s hand, in
the usual way of such things, with his own. ‘ ‘ I don’t know
about that. ’Twasn’t your fault, you know; and — look
here; you take the things. And, if anything happens to
me, you pay off your debts so that you can go ashore, and
set the mother up again in the farm.”

“ Oliver Graith — you’ve a heart of gold!”

“ Gammon. I ”

“And — on Hanno Sands — you say there’s more ! Pow-
ers above ! To think that if — if anything happened — your
mother would lose it all ; that such a secret as yours should
perish forever!”

‘ ‘ Ambrose — I ”

“No; don’t say a word tome. I won’t listen. You’ve
trusted me too much already. You’re far too wise to trust
any living mortal with such a secret— let alone me, whom
nobody would trust vvith a farthing. No; not a word.”

For the first time since he was born, Oliver Graith was
conscious of nerves. Till Ambrose had talked to him in
his fatherly^ way the whole burden of his treasure was that,
possessing it, his possession was a mockery. But now,
under the influence of a man who understood the potent
art of being able to read his fellows, he felt aghast at the
appalling fact that only the life of a sailor in time of war
guarded the treasure of Hanno Sands from being lost for-
ever. And how much, if not lost, it could do ! It could
bring back the heritage of the Graiths ; it could banish pov-

72

GOLDEN BELLS.

erty from all Forth tyre ; it could almost repay Susan for
her sandwiches ; it could make Susan’s father hold up his
head again among men.

In short, the gold fever, under the influence of one of its
archpriests, was making its first insidious advances into
the heart of Oliver. As yet, indeed, gold was speaking to
him in the name of what it could do ; but that is the first
step toward speaking in the name of what it can be. Prod -
igality— avarice; these are Alpha and Omega, whatever
letters come between.

And yet was it wholly the influence of Lancelot Am-
brose? Or had that disk and its diamond, or the strange
characters engraved thereon, a yet more subtle power?
However that may be, the golden altar bells began inaudi-
bly but not the less magically to chime.

"“We toll,” they rang, “the death of ancient days; we
ring the birth of ages yet to be, when still, however parted
by the ways of old and new, in this shall they agree, that
ever of the good and evil tree the root is good intent, and
nothing else ; the stem thereof is named idolatry ; leaves,
life; bloom, death; fruit— dirge of Golden Bells.”

Not one word did he understand, any more than I. But
then who does understand his own thoughts? It is a great
deal if he understand another’s; and the bare fact that
Oliver Graith’s thoughts ran into rhyme is well-nigh
enough to prove that they had arrived at the point of being
incomprehensible to anybody, himself included.

“ Hw — i — i — ee!”

The boatswain’s signal— all hands!

Oliver Graith’s first experience of the life of a king’s
sailor, as distinguished from that of the anti-revenue serv-
ice, was the crash of iron through the port-hole of the
deck, where he was serving a gun, and the fall of a mess-
mate beside him.

It does not speak well for the tactical skill of the captain
of the Seamew that he should have received a broadside at
the outset of an action. But there was no opportunity for
critical judgment on the lower deck, where Oliver Graith
neither saw nor knew anything but that, of the guns filling
the air with thunder, there was one to be served. What
was known was that the Seamew had, after riding out that
wonderful wind, and meeting no mischance in the great
sea-fog, fallen in with a French cruiser, and nobody
looked upon that as any break in her good luck, or
dreamed of there being anything on board in the nature of
a talisman of evil.

And why should there be? For there were no such
things in those days, any more than in these. It is true

GOLDEN BELLS.

73

Oliver Graith’s luck had been very much of the devil’s
own order since he had become the owner of those little
golden bells, not to speak of the disk and of other curiosi-
ties. It is true the things seemed inspired by some sort of
an imp whose mission was to tantalize him with wealth he
was not permitted to use or to enjoy, and to unnerve him,
by obliging him, awake or asleep, on duty or off it, to
keep the hard- to-be-kept secret of golden chains. But
nobody knew of this, except the only man on board who
would have found nothing awkward or unlucky in the
possession of treasure, even though on the summit of a vir-
gin mountain, or even carrying it down with him to the
bottom of the sea — where, no doubt, there is plenty more.

To have fallen in with a Frenchman where none could
be engaged on any reasonable service was therefore looked
upon, in good British fashion, as a piece of ill-luck for the
Frenchman, and of unexpected good fortune for the Sea-
mew. It is not good to have to take part in a fight, with
one’s mind and heart, as well as one’s nerves and mus-
cles. weighed down with less honest metal than lead and
steel. But as the thunder stunned his ears and the powder
filled his nostrils, his heart began to grow lighter and his
brain to clear. What had become of Ambrose after their
interrupted conversation he did not know — probably he
was serving in the cock-pit, where the wounded gave non-
combatants plenty to do.

Service of the guns on the lower deck, though a position
of comparative safety, was hardly on that account to be
preferred. It was like fighting in the dark, and blindly,
against a foe of unknown strength, only realized when, as
had now already twice happened, a hail of wooden splinters
accompanied a well-aimed ball through the port- bole.
Oliver could not even see the course of the battle. But,
inexperienced as he was, he could tell that it was a hard
one. Through the sulphurous and stinging cloud into
which the air between decks was becoming changed, he
knew, though without time to look, that wounded men
from the upper deck were being hastily carried past him ;
and, at the second broadside, another man’s brains were
dashed out close beside him.

Nobody had time to think or thought of thinking; other-
wise there would have seemed something bewildering even
in the suddenness of the duel. It was as if — let the watch
account for it if they can — an enemy had all at once, and
without warning, risen out of the waves or dropped from
the clouds. I know there are such tales, especially belong-
ing to these narrow seas ; sailors have plenty of them, and
the Royal Marines plenty more. But there must have been
something more than any ordinary flight of fact in what had

74

GOLDEN BELLS.

befallen the Seamew. The crew of the Lively Peg would
have told them that they carried Jonah. But even then
they would not have known what else they carried If no
ship had ever before met with so sudden a foe, no ship had
ever before carried golden bells from Fairyland.

However, if the Seamew had met a sudden foe, why so
had the Frenchman, Jonah or no Jonah; and the two ships
kept at it hard. It was not every day, no, nor every year,
that an English frigate met an enemy that took so much
beating; for in those days the French, at least by sea, were
anything but worthy of our powder, and required good
odds for winning. But here was a sea-lion in the path.
What damage the Seamew had done was beyond guessing
where Oliver Graith served ; but what she suffered was
not even there entirely beyond seeing.

At length an ominous crash— and then the strangest
silence in the world. But it was broken by a shock that
made the Seamew sway and reel, and then by a wild yell.
There was a tramping overhead ; and then again pierced
through all this new clamor the boatswain’s whistle, sharp
and shrill.

In the midst of his comrades, Oliver hurried to the upper
deck, and gladly ; for anything was better than those long
hours of loading in a blinding and suffocating smoke against
an unseen foe. And what he saw sent all the fighting man
in him tingling from his heart to his hands.

The foremast had been shot and hacked away ; but the
two ships had become a single battle-field, locked main-
yard to main-yard. He could see the enemy now, both
ship and men — a big frigate, with decks towering over those
of the Seamew, from which a half -naked crew, bronzed
and bearded, was swarming down upon pikes and cutlasses
below.

The smoke still hung in a blue-and-white cloud over the
two vessels, on which two sets of men, bare-headed, bare-
footed, most of them stark- naked to the waist, and
strangely tattooed, scorched, blackened, and slashed crim-
son, were met in a life-and-death struggle hand to hand.
The sea still swelled heavily ; the sun still blazed upon the
decks running blood, and the worse slaughter to come.
Only two things outside nature remained constant and
calm — the gray leaded gentleman on the quarter-deck, and
the Union Jack above the battle and the smoke, clear
against the blue sky.

The summons from the lower deck brought fresh blood
into play. Neither duty, nor love of home or country, nor
any instinct but pure battle fever boiled up in Oliver Graith
on finding himself a fighting atom in such a scene. I fear he
would have felt it had he been on board his own cutter and

GOLDEN BELLS,

75

been attacked by the Seamew; he had felt it somewhat in
the midst of his great contest with Tom Polwarth, on
Porthtyre Green. But these touches of fever were as noth-
ing to this when he was breathing in at every pore the air
of mortal battle in common with a hundred friends among
a hundred foes. He forgot his gold gloriously; and I
know not how, but there was inspiration in the bit of red-
crossed bunting above him that inspired even this pressed
slave, with no care for any cause and assuredly no hatred
for a Frenchman, to feel that he would rather throw away
a hundred lives and lose a hundred homes than it should
cease to fly toward the sun.

So it was that, catching a pike from a falling comrade,
he found himself one in a rush that was made to scale the
enemy’s deck at a point left for the moment unguarded.
How it happened he knew no more than a tiger who makes
a spring; only it was with a sort of joy, worth every mo-
ment he had ever lived, that he found himself standing on
the French deck with some half -dozen more.

“Well done, Graith!” said the lad in front of him, turn-
ing round with a laugh — his old friend the midshipman.
“You are the right stuff — now then, stand your ground,
lads ”

He threw up his arms, as when a bullet strikes a vital
part — “Hold on; they’ll follow,” he cried out, and fell.
Oliver strode over him with set teeth and leveled pike.

“Ay — hold on!” he echoed, grimly. And though a
dozen Frenchmen, seeing their intrusion, were upon them,
they did hold on. The fall of the boy who had made a
slave of him went to his heart, and put a human touch into
the fury he shared with all around. A choking feeling
came into his throat— a weakness that changed fury into
courage.

There was no forcing their way forward ; but the five who
were left might hope to hold their ground till support could
come. They had the bulwark behind them, and they set
themselves back to back so that the Frenchmen must meet
a face everywhere, and a pike besides.

Oliver, by superior strength or fortune, stood in front.
And there rushed upon him, in one furious attack, doubt-
less directed from the French quarter-deck, a number of
shouting and yelling savages — for such had their oppo-
nents now become.

With a fierce cry the foremost, snapping a pistol in Oli-
ver’s face, prepard to spring.

He lowered his pike, so that the savage might have
something to leap upon. But — well, he was still young at
this sort of work, and his weapon loosened in his hand.

‘ ‘ Gaspard !’ ’ he cried. ‘ ‘ You /’ ’

76

GOLDEN BELLS.

“ Oliver Graith!”

The two, for a moment, regarded one another blankly—
two men who had made a dozen voyages together, and
shared revels and perils, and— they were here: the one for
King George, whom he had spent his life in robbing; the
other for the republic, for which he cared not a single
straw.

Well — there was nothing for it. Friends or foes, one had
to kill the other; that was clear unless Oliver chose to
drop back upon the deck of the Seamew.

“Hold on, lads!” he cried, echoing the dying words of
the boy between his feet, and grasping his weapon once
more.

There were no lads left to hold on! Oliver stood sur-
rounded and alone, with three comrades dead at his feet ;
or four ; or five — unless some were foes.

“Come on then,” said he.

But at that supreme moment such a shout went up from
the yard-locked ships that made the very sky ring again.
Alas ! it was no British cheer. Oliver, startled, was forced
by a dozen hands to his knees, while Gaspard’s arm threw
aside a cutlass that was well on its way to his skull.

“ Vive la Republique P' the sky seemed to echo back as
the Union Jack went down, for once; but, as always, with-
out shame. But the cry fell dead almost as soon as it
arose. The French vessel reeled as if about to capsize as a
clap of thunder followed a rushing cloud of black smoke
which took the place of her enemy. And when the smoke
rolled away that enemy was no more. Only floating tim-
bers and a few struggling men showed where the Seamew
had been.

CHANGE THE SIXTH.

OF HANDS.

It was very strange, as I have already said, that the
Seamew, hitherto considered, as every student of naval
history knows, a rather lucky ship, and skillfully as well
as boldly handled, should have been so inexplicably sur-
prised. But a yet stranger thing was that with the Venge-
resse— so the French frigate was named— everything
seemed to go wrong after her startling victory. It was as
if wherever Oliver Graith went he carried the very demon
of bad luck with him.

Indeed, from the moment that he with the survivors of
the Seamew — there were not many of them— became a
prisoner of war on board the French vessel, the chronicle
of mishaps suffered by the Vengeresse would be too monot-
onous to tell. There was not a day that something did not

GOLDEN BELLS.

77

go wrong. No doubt she had suffered considerably from
her duel ; but that did not account for a tithe of her minor
troubles or graver disasters. She was bound for the Med-
iterranean, with a good wind— it was certainly not the fault
of the Seamew that the wind from that moment turned
dead against her. Then scurvy broke out ; that also was
not the fault of the Seamew. Finally, to make an inter-
minable story very short indeed, she found it needful to
put into the nearest port to refit and land her sick and
prisoners. This port happened to be Pauillac, where the
Yengeresse rested from her troubles, and on her laurels, in
the estuary of the Garonne.

Pauillac is but a little place, and had no accommodation
for prisoners, except the lazaretto, which was over-full, or
else was for some official reason held unavailable. No-
body ever did understand those matters, and nobody ever
will. At any rate, Oliver Graith found himself one morn-
ing handed over to a detachment of chasseurs; and, to his
amaze, in company with one whom he had not seen on
board the Yengeresse, and indeed never expected to see
again— Lancelot Ambrose.

And Susan’s father. The man might have wronged him
somewhat; but when they met in the yard of the lazaretto
among the fixed bayonets, Oliver held out his hand. It
was something to meet even an enemy — from home. Am-
brose grasped the extended hand warmly.

“ That is good of you!” he said in a tone of frank hu-
mility, of manly tenderness, which almost brought the
tears into Oliver’s eyes. “ How is it you are alive?”

“I’m hanged if I know,” said Oliver. “I was on board
the Yengeresse when the Seamew blew up and went down.
But you?”

“I was picked up from the wreck. Ah, Providence is a
wonderful thing!”

“And you have been aboard the Yengeresse all this
while?”

“Yes. I was able to be useful; and— let me put you up
to a wrinkle. Don’t let these fellows think you understand
their lingo. I’ve found out we’re to be taken to Bayonne
— one of their first-class fortresses ’ ’

“Bayonne! I know Bayonne. ”

“ All the better. I’ve hit on a plan. You’ll be confined
in the fortress ; if you use your eyes and your ears, you
won’t be able to help finding out no end of things that an
English commander would give an eye out of his head to
know. I suppose I shall be on parole; indeed, the captain
of the Yengeresse, who may do pretty well what he likes
after his victory, has promised to see to it. I can see you

78

GOLDEN BELLS.

now and then ; and between us we can do a good stroke of
business, it seems to me.”

But Oliver had no further opportunity at that moment
for comprehending Ambrose’s drift. For the company at
that moment fell in ; the prisoners were thrust into their
places toward the rear of the column ; the bugle sounded ;
and Oliver was marched away.

To Bayonne— a prisoner of war! He knew what that
meant — that he might not return home for years, if ever
again. Surely no mortal had ever gone through such a
course of bad luck, always from worse to worse, in so
short a while. First ruined, then pressed ; now a French
prisoner — and all the while the owner of actual wealth,
and the possessor of a secret that might make him the
I'ichest man in England, if only he were free.

It was more maddening than ever — assuredly he had
plenty of meditation for the road.

The first day they halted at Gastlenau ; the second they
reached Bordeaux, where Oliver for the first time saw a
real city. Here the force was increased by another com-
pany of chasseurs, a few more prisoners — Germans — and
some heavy wagons loaded with stores. Not much had
happened to Oliver beyond blistered feet and fatigue so
great as to make his thoughts almost unbearable. For
strong as he was, he was by this time not far from break-
ing down.

He was treated roughly, but in no way savagely. But
he observed that Lancelot Ambrose was not even treated
roughly — indeed, with consideration, as if he had been an
officer. At Bordeaux he was absent for some time from
the barracks, and on his return was supplied with materi-
als for writing. Then something puzzled him still more.
The British sailor was not expected to know French; and
an officer and a civilian with a tricolored sash round his
waist were talking freely after dining in the barrack-yard,
without heeding that Oliver was trying to mend his rags
with a needle and thread he had begged from a chasseur,
hard by.

” He must be a precious rascal,” said the soldier.

“ Perfidy is the attribute of Albion,” said the magistrate.

“ Figure to yourself a Frenchman offering to become a
British spy for pay 1”

“ Honor is the attribute of France, my captain.”

“And you think you can trust such a swine?”

“No. But we can use him. He’s too bold a devil to
waste, if what he told Captain Duval of the Vengeresse is
true.”

“ What’s that?”

GOLDEN BELLS.

79

**That he exploded the English vessel in the nick of
time.”

“And do you believe that?”

“Well— no. But I think he would; if he thought it
paid.”

Could they possibly be speaking of Lancelot Ambrose?
If so, they must be credulous, indeed — an Englishman turn-
ing French spy and destroying a British frigate; absurd!
For since the great fight between the Seamew and the
Vengeresse, Oliver was turning patriot ; he had fought and
was suffering for England now, and whether one does that
of one’s free will or against it, the result is always the
same. He had seen his own flag struck ; and after that a
microscope could not find the difference between a con-
script and a volunteer. No; they could not be speaking of
the father of the truest -hearted girl that ever was born;
and, if they did, they were either liars or fools. Any other
British tar would have summed it all up in that term of su-
preme contempt, “ Frenchman!” but then Oliver knew the
Frenchman too well to despise him.

It was curious how Oliver was beginning to see Susan’s
father through Susan, of whom he once upon a time — what
ages ago it seemed ! — used to think so little. But it was
natural, too; as, after all, curious things mostly are.
There is nothing that makes us want to see people and to
think of them like the certainty that we shall never see
them again.

From Bordeaux they passed through the neglected vine-
yards by a wearisomely straight road, and then over a line
of low hills, to a village called, I think, Le Barp, where the
soldiers were quartered on the villagers, those for whom
there was no room bivouacking, Oliver and the Germans
being lodged in a stable full of abominations, with a sentry
over them. And here it was that, for the first time since
be had been born, sleep refused to come to him when it
was due. While the Germans snored and the rats gnawed
and scrambled over them, he seemed to see that wonderful
Temple of the Sands take form in the moonlight, and to re-
alize all that it meant if he should perish abroad, leaving
his mother and Susan to toil for their daily bread, or more
likely to starve, in the midst of wealth untold. If he could
only send them a message ! But he might as wisely have
wished for wings.

The next day the straight, interminable road led the
party fairly into the desert of the Landes, through which,
as Oliver heard, it was some five days’ march to Bayonne.

Everybody knows all about the Landes— that immense
waste, fringed on its coast by marshes and dunes ; inhab-
ited as to that fringe by little colonies of fishermen here

80

GOLDEN BELLS.

and there, and inland by scattered shepherds and charcoal-
burners; including— at that period— a proportion of pro-
fessional highwaymen who watched the traffic between
Bayonne, Bordeaux, and Mont de Marsan, and a number
of Girondists and Royalists who, more or less in alliance
with the latter, had, for the present, escaped the guillotine.
Their features, not excepting the characteristic phenom-
enon of stilted shepherds who looked like giants wander-
ing round the horizon, were not altogether unknown to
Oliver. He had helped Captain Vasco to receive more
than one cargo upon the dunes; and had once accompanied
a party of fishermen and charcoal-burners to fetch some
casks of cognac waiting for the Lively Peg some leagues
inland. These memories, however, were of no help to
him ; they only intensified his helplessness. Of course he
thought of escape ; he thought of it a hundred times. But
it was impossible. At night he was strictly guarded ; and
even if there were a chance of taking to his heels by day,
what was the good of seizing it without so much as a bush
or a mound to make for, for miles round? A fox might as
well attempt to escape from the hounds in the open ; and
as for running, he was worn out and footsore ; and were he
nob, there were bullets to follow him, as well as untired
and active men. And, w^ere the impossible possible, to
desert Susan’s father would be an act of shameful baseness
more impossible still.

On the second evening, not having passed a dwelling for
leagues, halt was called at a small inn, or posting-house,
with the sign of the Fleur-de-Lys ; how it came to obtain
such a symbol can only be accounted for on the supposi-
tion that nobody thereabouts knew its meaning. The
soldiers bivouacked round the wagons ; Oliver was for the
present disposed of in an outhouse by himself— the prison-
ers had been kept apart since leaving Le Barb, presumably
lest too long companionship should lead to plotting.

He was not entirely in the dark, for he had been allowed
a horn lantern to see the blackness of the bread given him
for supper ; so he occupied himself by taking his knife and
noting with it on a fragment of a wooden bucket the bear-
ings of the buried temple and the exact number of paces
it lay east of the watercourse. Then he cautiously and
reverently took the jeweled disk and the little bells of gold
from the folds of his ragged shirt and supped on them with
his eyes. How well, by this time, he knew the tune those
bells rang — he knew it by heart, and it was always the
same, mocking him with words he could not understand.
How that jewel shone! How mysterious looked those
cabalistic signs 1 Suddenly he started and hid them hur-
liedly.

GOLDEN BELLS. 81

Not three yards from his head he heard the giggle of a
girl.

Then he heard the scampering of wooden shoes.

Well — it was a pleasant sound; and he was ashamed of
himself for having started, like a miser caught gloating
over a secret hoard ; and indeed no hoard was ever more
useless to the maddest miser than this magic jewel was to
Oliver. He took his lantern, and looked about to see
whence the sound could have come. He found nothing;
but he gave up supping on jewels and gold.

But presently he heard whispers — as plainly as if they
Were within the same walls with himself and his gems.

“What a fine, big man to be sure, Floriane!” said the
voice of one girl — in queer French, it is true, but very
much of the sort that Oliver had learned from his own
sailors.

“ Ah, yes, poor fellow!” said the voice of another — “ no
doubt, Floriane.”

“ And he is handsome, too. I’m sure he’s ever so much
handsomer than any of the soldiers, though he is a devil of
an Englishman. I’d sooner give him a kiss than the cap-
tain himself— wouldn’t you?”

“ Oh, Cathon 1 Suppose he should understand !”

“ As if ! Poor fellow — it is a shame. And perhaps with
a sweetheart at home — perhaps a wife; who knows?”

“Ah,” sighed Floriane; “ who knows indeed?”

“I know what we’ll do, Floriane!” said Cathon. “I’ll
go into the kitchen and tie a sausage and a bottle of Bor-
deaux to a string, and let it down through the hole. Won’t
it be fun!”

“ Oh, Cathon ! Suppose we were seen?”

“ By the soldiers? A fig for the soldiers! If they make
a fuss, I’ll box their ears all round. What are you sigh-
ing like that for? Don’t you think it’s fun? Or have
you fallen in love with that big handsome devil there? I
have; and I’ll get him the very biggest sausage I can
find.”

“I was thinking— if it was Gaspard!” sighed Floriane
again.

“Oh, I forgot you had a sweetheart already ”

“Cathon! Perhaps he’s in an English prison; perhaps
— this poor fellow makes me think of Gaspard, Cathon. If
the Vengeresse should get taken ”

“A French ship taken, Floriane? Bah! such a thing
couldn’t be.”

“And I am happy to tell you, mademoiselle,” said Oli-
ver, raising the lantern and holding up his face toward the
whisperers — “ I am happy to tell you that Gaspard Rousi-

82

GOLDEN BELLS.

noul. of the Vengeresse, is no further off than Pauillac, and
is very well indeed.”

“Ah !” the whisper ended in a scuttle and a scream.

But Oliver was not surprised when, five minutes later,
he heard :

“ M’sieur!”

“ Mademoiselle Floriane?”

“You do speak French, then? Is it true about Gaspard?
Quite true?”

“Quite true.”

“Thank God! and God bless you, monsieur! Gaspard
Eousinoul is my betrothed ”

“ And my old shipmate. Has he ever spoken to you of
the Lively Peg, poor dear lass, and Oliver Graith, of Porth-
tyre?”

* ‘ Oh — a thousand times !’ ’

“ I am he. And he saved my life besides. Not that it
was worth the saving ; but he meant well. ’ ’

“ Oh, monsieur!” He heard the clasping of hands.

“ Don’t call me monsieur, there’s a dear girl.”

But there was no answer — she was gone again.

Two minutes later —

“ Pst!” This time it was Cathon, who, as good as her
word, let a sausage and a bottle dangle from a hole in the
roof. He took them and nodded. “ I wish I could let you
draw up that kiss!” said he.

“ Oh— he knew what we said!” cried Cathon, running
away. Oh, Mon Dieu P'

He drank some of the wine, and then waited for a whole
hour. He was sorry he frightened Cathon away, who
seemed a friendly sort of girl, and deserved thanking. It
was the first touch of human kindness he had known since
Susan filled his pockets with bread and chine ; and, after
all, why should not sentiment cling round beef or sausage
as well as round lilies and roses?

“ Monsieur!” It was Floriane this time.

“Yes, Floriane.”

“ Don’t speak — listen. I mustn’t be missed too long. I
want to do for you what I should like somebody to do for
Gaspard. There is a cutter off the Etang de St. Julien; my
cousin Blaise, who’s been betrothed to Cathon, has got
charge of her cargo ; cognac from Bordeaux, for England.
You understand?”

“ Good God ! You mean to help me escape ”

“ Hush — don’t speak so loud; don’t speak at all. I am
taking off the tiles with my fingers; I’m on the roof of the
shed ; I can make a hole big enough for you to get through,
if you can pull yourself up to it. Cathon will take you to

GOLDEN BELLS.

83

Blaise— he’ll do anything for her, though she does laugh at
him so. poor fellow; and you will go with him to Etang.”

“God~ bless you, Floriane! but will they take me on
board?”

” On board — you? Are you not also a contrahandista—
are you not the shipmate of Gaspard Bousinoul?” she asked,
with pride.

“True. Floriane — I won’t try to thank you. Gaspard
only gave me life — you give me liberty. But wait I I was
forgetting!”

“ What is it?”

“I’m not alone.”

“Not alone?”

“ No. There is another English prisoner. Without him
I cannot go.” And how indeed could he meet Susan’s face,
having to tell her that he had selfishly deserted her father
in his need? There are some prices that one cannot pay,
even for liberty.

“ Oh!” — which meant angry despair.

“My dear girl, I can’t indeed. You see he’s the father
of ”

“ Of— what is her name?”

“ Why — what makes you think it’s her? Susan — if you
want to know. And ”

“Ah, I see; I understand. Of course, you could not
leave Susan’s father behind. No, Gaspard would not
leave mine; he would know what I should say. But I am
sorry. It is different — two instead of one. Is he contra-
bandista, too? Where is he now? With the soldiers, or in
the Fleur-de-Lys?”

“That’s the worst of it: I can’t tell you. But you’re a
clever girl, Floriane, I’m sure. He’s the only English
prisoner but me. All the others are beasts of Dutch-
men ”

“Ah, I know. He’ll be the one in the kitchen — where
he’s drinking wine and eating ham like an officer. He
isn’t even under lock and key.”

“Yes; that’s he. He’s a gentleman, you know. But if
he’s on parole ”

“ On what, monsieur?”

“If he’s given his word not to escape” — Oliver’s heart
was beating loudly. To be on the threshold of escape, and
to find the door slammed in his face; but his bad luck
seemed to know no end.

Floriane had vanished again.

♦ sjc sH >|c *

But his fear proved groundless.

Floriane did not return. But in no more than half an
hour after she withdrew Oliver Graith wa^ striding over

84

GOLDEN BELLS.

the turf with Lancelot Ambrose, and a stout girl with a
saucy face acting as their guide.

After another half-hour’s quick walking in silence they
saw in front of them a dark mass against the sky, which
proved to be a wagon with four solid, spokeless wheels,
drawn by four mules harnessed all abreast, in the stupid
fashion that must have descended from the days of the
Romans, attended by a peasant in a blouse armed, not with
a whip, but a goad.

“There is Blaise,” said Cathon. “He is very, very
stupid,” she added, raising her voice to a pitch sharp
enough for Blaise to hear, “ but you may trust him; that
is one good thing about fools. Blaise — come here.”

Blaise came. He was a big peasant with a stolid face
clothed in imperturbable good-humor, which lighted up at
the command of Cathon. The two held a conversation
that ended in an attempt to snatch a kiss, and a resound-
ing box on the ear.

“ It’s all right,” said Cathon. “ I’ll tell you what you
have to do; I can’t trust Blaise, he’d be safe to blunder;
he alwaj^s blunders. He’ll drive you in the wagon as far
as the Etang de St. Julien. Then he’ll wait till he sees a
certain light out over the sea, a different light from the
others, they call it ”

“ I know,” said Oliver. “ They call it Fol-Garou.”

“Ah! Then ”

“Then,” said Oliver, “Blaise will show a light three
times, and lead off the mules, and the cart will wait for a
boat from the cutter.”

“Why, you know all about it,” said Cathon, clapping
her hands.

“ Good -night, gentlemen; good voyage, and adieu.”

“Take this — and this,” said Oliver, pressing two jewels
into her hand and closing her fingers over them as he
kissed her on the cheek. ‘ ‘ One for you— one for Floriane.
They’ll help you to remember the two poor prisoners you’ve
helped to-night ; and the next Frenchman I meet in like
trouble I’ll do by him as you have done by me. Now,
Blaise.”

“So I always blunder, do I?” asked Blaise, with a grin.

“ Always,” said Cathon.

“Then I don’t for once!” he exclaimed, triumphantly,
seizing his kiss at last by surprise. His whip cracked, al-
most as loudly. “Now, messieurs!”

“Comrades, Blaise!. Good-night, Cathon.”

For some minutes they proceeded in silence. The escape
had been so swift and so simple that it was like a dream.
Ambrose was the first to break silence,

“ What did you give that girl?”

GOLDiSN BIELLS. B5

*‘0h, I hardly know. Some trifles from the sands.
“ Do you know I was half afraid you couldn’t come.”

“Why not?”

“I was afraid you’d given your parole, as you weren’t
under lock and key.”

Ambrose shrugged his shoulders. “Then you’re still
worth robbing?” he asked, with a smile.

“Yes; I’ve not lost a thing. Everything seems queer,
since I’ve had these —things. One would think they were
invisible to everybody but me ; real fairy gold. I’ve swum
with them; I’ve been in battle with them; I’ve been a
prisoner with them afloat and ashore, among Frenchmen
and Dutchmen; and I’ve never had a scratch in battle,
and when the scurvy broke out on the Vengeresse I was
the only man that wasn’t down. It sometimes frightens
me, and makes my skin feel full of needles. And yet, do
what I will, I can’t get to Hanno Sands; as if the things
themselves prevented me; so that the secret may be a
secret forever. Ambrose, I believe something will happen
before I reach the cutter ; or, if I do reach it, that some-
thing will happen to

“You feel like that?”

“ You may laugh, but it’s no laughing matter to me.”

“ God forbid, my dear boy. The ways of Providence are
queer. ’ ’

“ When you get back to England — what shall you do?”

“Well, I haven’t yet made my plans; but my pockets
aren’t quite as empty as thej" were; I made myself useful
to the authorities at Bordeaux, and — but that’s neither
here nor there. I think I shall go to London.”

“To London!” It was as if, in these days, a man had
said: “ I shall make a voyage to the moon,” so remote an
idea was London to Oliver Graith’s mind.

“ Yes. I’ve used my eyes and my ears, and I’ve learned
some things Mr. Pitt will be glad to know. One must do
one’s duty to Old England, my dear boy.”

“Ambrose — I’ve got a notion; if anything does happen
to me, my mother and your Susan mustn’t lose that secret.
I’ve told you half already ”

“And God bless you for your trust in an unfortunate but
innocent man!” said Ambrose, pressing his hand. He
guessed what was coming; but, while his heart beat, his
voice was humble and low, suggesting suppressed tears.

“ Take this, Ambrose. On this bit of wood I’ve marked
down all the bearings of the ruin where all that treasure is
to be found. There’s the watercourse; you’ll strike that
by keeping along the coast from the harbor. Follow up
the coast so many yards— I’ve noted them on the plan —
which will bring them to that point there. Then make

86

GOLDEN BELLB.

just a point and a half to the north, keeping an easterly
course, for so many paces more ; and if from that point you
strike a fairish big round, you’ll find— what you’ll find.
There. I’m easier now. It isn’t likely we shall either of
us get there alive.”

“ Both of us, I trust,” said Ambrose. “And if only one,
I trust it will be the young man — not the old. But if,
which Heaven forbid, it should be I and not you, trust me;
your secret is safe with me. ’ ’

“And you’ll do the best with it— for mother; for all?
You’ll buy back the farm?”

“ Sacredly.”

“Thank you, Ambrose. Half the weight of this con-
founded thing has gone. Oh, Ambrose! The sea!”

He threw back his head, and with expanded nostrils
caught the pungent fiavor of the wet wund blown over salt
marshes. And presently his ears also caught the boom of
waves on the sand.

The air was sharp as well as salt, and helped the prospect
of home and freedom, and his deliverance from the solitude
of a secret, to put fresh life into” his blood and his nerves.
The vast, unbroken plain, lighted only by a moon veiled
in flying scud, all dreary and gray, was to him the plain of
paradise — if only Blaise’s mules would not crawl so slowly
with their heavy load.

But slower and slower they had to crawl, as the heavy
wheels began to lurch into looser ground. Every now and
then the three had to descend, and use their strength to
help the beasts drag the cart out of a pool ; and at times
they had to do this wading above the knees. The pools be-
came closer and closer, deeper and deeper; and the moon,
passing out into a space of free sky, shone down upon a
broad and calm lagoon, edged with reeds and dotted with
islands and sand, beyond which ran a line of snowy
foam.

“The Etang de St. Julien, messieurs,” said Blaise.

And scarcely had they reached the margin than a pale
star came out beyond the foam, and, in a second, vanished
again ; then came out two in its place, and lasted twice as
long; then three, in the form of a triangle, one above and
two below.

“ And,” almost whispered Oliver, the “ Fol-Garou!”

The signal was duly answered; and Blaise, having re-
ceived, on the understanding that it was of no value but as
a keepsake, a token of gratitude worth his whole cargo and
the duty besides, trotted homeward with his mules.

“ I wish I had one pipe of tobacco!” said Oliver.

“I wish every wish could be so easily fulfilled,” said
Ambrose, offering him a pouchful.

GOLDEN DELLS.

87

“ It^g Caporal ! It seems to me being prisoner of war isn’t
such a bad business, if one knows how to go about it,” said
Oliver, his spirits rising. ” When I’m rich, Ambrose, I’ll
' ” 1 thing I’ll do; of course after buy-

“Well?”

“I’ll store every war-prison in England with as much
tobacco as every Frenchman in them can smoke all day
long till the end of the war. Will you have some sau-
sage, Ambrose? And a glass, or rather a drain, of
wine?”

“ Why, how have you got ”

“ Ah ! Other people can prison pay besides you, you see.
These were tributes to my — beauty I On my honor, they
were. If I weren’t so hungry, I’d carry home this sausage
as a keepsake. But the wine must have a toast. Cathon
and Floriane!”

“ Are you sure that boat’s crew will come?”

“ Come? Of course it will. Why, I've been at this work
myself scores of times. I expect the cutter we’ve come to
meet will be the Santissima Stella del Mar— or the Bounc-
ing Bell. I wish it were the Peggy, poor soul ! But come
— of course they’ll come.”

“ And — they’ll take us on board?”

“You trust to me. If there’s nobody knows Oliver
Graith, tlicn I’m a Dutchman. And then we’ve got a bet-
ter reason still.”

“ What’s that?”

“ You’ll have to give them some of that money you got
at Bordeaux. I can’t give them any more jewelry — they’re
good fellows, but — whatever you pay for the passage, I’ll
make good out of Hanno Sands.”

“You are gm^esure?”

“ Lord, yes ! As sure as that this tobacco is the best ever
smoked, and that wine the best ever drank, and that sau-
sage the best ever eaten. Giving you that bit of wood has
taken a load off my mind. Luck must turn at last! Am-
brose— just think what going home means to me; what it
means to mother, who’ll be mistress of the farm again 1 I
sha'n’t squander it away again — never fear! As for the
money, we’ll do all the good we can. There sha'n’t be a
poor man or a poor woman within twenty miles of Porth-
tyre. There shall be no more of this sort of work for, the
lads; and the lasses — bless them— shall never cry their
hearts out again. Yes, Ambrose; we’re going home!
Ah!”

It was a start, rather than cry or groan — it was the
amazement of a trustful dog, rather than a man’s despair
that filled his eyes as he felt a violent blow follow the lift-

as &OLT)EN BELLS.

ing up of Ambrose’s arm, and a strong knife bury itself in
his side.

Lancelot Ambrose tugged out the knife, and let the blood
flow freely. Having satisfied himself that all was over, he
hastily stripped the corpse of its fatal treasure, and dragged
it into the lagoon. Then he sat and waited for the boat’s
crew. Providence had been faithful to him indeed — to
him, henceforth sole owner of the secret of Hanno Sands.

CHANGE THE SEVENTH.

OF WIND.

I.

Susan made extraordinary progress in the good graces of
Old Nick. It was certainly not by means of deference, for
sh^ was probably the only creature in the parish who
showed no awe of him— so little indeed that she treated
him with a sort of good-humored patronage ; I am not sure
that, while others took the old gentleman for a sort of be-
nevolent wizard, who might prove dangerous if provoked,
she did not regard him as a kind of a natural. A real
wizard would certainly have known a little more about so
elementary an art as butter-making. And he used to look
so starved and so lean when he visited the farm in his
queer way that, for pity’s sake, she used on such occasions
to give him something like a comfortable meal; and once
she sewed up a rent in his coat, though the garment was so
frowsy that she shuddei'ed to think of it for days. On
such occasions, so far from saying thank you, he used to
rate her roundly for extravagant interference; but she
gave him back as good as she got, and a trifle over. As
for Tom Polwarth, when he took to being gloomy over her
service with Old Nick — and he was getting gloomier every
day — she openly laughed at him. “He a wizard! As
much as you’re a blacksmith, or as I’m a witch,” she said,
the first time. ^

“There’s more unlikely things than that,” said Tom.
And she never made that particular answer again. For
all her better wits, brought out by adversity, she some-
how found that she was becoming less and less able to
hold her own with Tom. He was not getthig the least less
shy, nor was he less often out when the moon shone ; but
he was a good deal less at the tavern, and a good deal
more of a man.

One day Old Nick startled her indeed. Instead of his
ragged coat, his bald and greasy hat, and his boots and
breeches, unmentionable for other than conventional
reasons, he drove up to the farm in his ramshackle gig, in
a coat which, though many sizes too large, and apparently

GOLDEN BELLS.

89

made for a Quaker, was certainly not worse than good
second-hand; in an absolutely new cocked hat, a striped
waistcoat, top-boots and gaiters. Face, hands, and nails
were past the power of soap ; but he had done what he
could, and he carried in his Quaker coat a dahlia that
made him look more of a dwarf by comparison than he
had looked in his natural condition.

“What are you staring at?” he asked, with a savage
scowl. “ Don’t say you’re not, because you are. A man
must shift his clothes sometimes. I suppose you think I
sleep in them, boots and all. ’ ’

“ What extravagance!” said Susan.

“ Never mind. We must make it up. You’re not a bad
girl, Susan, as girls go. Not that they’re much at the best;
they’re all of them — girls. But I’ve been making up my
mind to give you a treat, a real treat ; a treat for which
the Queen of Sheba would have given one of her eyes.”

“ What in the world is the old gentleman up to now?”
asked Susan. And so puzzled was she that she could only
stare again.

“Ah, I suppose you’re thinking my coat’s too large,”
said Old Nick. “It isn’t, then; it’s nothing of the
kind ”

“I was thinking you might be a trifle small for the
coat ”

‘ ‘ Nothing of the kind. I like things made loose and easy.
I should have it made just the same if I was seven foot of
fool. Everybody over six feet runs to fool. It’s a law
of nature. Don’t say it isn’t, just for being contradictory.
I’ve a good mind not to give you any treat at all. Aren’t
you burning with curiosity and excitement, eh? But you
sha’n’t say you’re not, because you are; I can see it in your
eyes.”

“ What is it— the treat?”

“ A ride in my gig — there!”

It did not sound very much of a treat to drive in such a
gig with such a guy; nor did Susan, for many reasons,
take kindly to the idea. She was busy also ; and, as she
worked for her own profit as well as for her master’s, a
holiday was so much dead loss — a hint that masters in gen
eral may do well to consider. But then, having practi-
cally to keep a household, she was, at remarkable speed,
developing into a woman of the world — no less the world
because it was small — and acquiring, besides the energetic
virtues of such a character, its natural faults; or, rather,
call them foibles. She could not hope to manage people
without understanding them; and, as she was becoming
ambitious that way, it would not do to let slip an oppor-
tunity of finding out a little more of what was going on,

90

GOLDEN BELLS.

That the proposed excursion meant nothing more than a
treat she did not for a moment suppose.

So she rolled down her sleeves, put on her only shawl
and her big beaver bonnet, and was ready in no time, look-
ing as fresh as the day.

“Susan,” said Old Nick, angrily, with a stamp and a
scowl, “ you are a pretty girl. Don’t say you’re not ”

“ Indeed, I’m not going to,” said she.

“ Yes you were. But j^ou’re not to say it, because you
are. Here!”

He took the huge dahlia from his coat. “There — take
that. Do you hear?” He spoke as if he were repaying
her a box on the ear. “ Take it; I paid three halfi)ence for
it for being extra large. ’ ’

“Thank you kindly!” said Susan. “But I won’t >vear
it. I’ll put it in water; and then, you see, it won’t wear
out so soon.”

“Ah! and to think/ never thought of that!” said he.
‘ ‘ How much longer will it last in water than if you took
it out for a drive?”

“ Oh — perhaps six or seven times as long.”

“Say six times. Then it is just as if I had got all that
flower, three halfpennies’ worth, for one farthing ! Susan,
you are a very pretty girl !”

Much to her relief, the gig avoided the village. But none
the less, by a number of short-cuts and turnings with
which old Nick, considering that he was a stranger, seemed
marvelously familiar, it emerged into the high-road.
Equally to her relief. Old Nick, whether impressed by her
economical genius or by his magical problems, was silent ;
for an occasional grunt addressed to the world at large, or
an interjection in an unknown tongue could not be re-
garded as conversation.

“ Where are we going?” asked she.

“Anybody may ask a question, but nobody is bound to
answer,” said he. “A very wise man said that, and it is
true.”

“ Who was the wise man? Was it you?”

“What makes you think I’m wise?” he asked, turning
round so suddenly that the horse started.

“ I really don’t know,” said Susan; “ only you said your-
self that everybody that’s tall is foolish, and so ”

He sighed. “Wise? I wonder if I am! But a man
needn’t be seven feet to be quite tall enough, all the
same.”

“ It must be so extravagant to be very tall,” said Susan.

“Eh! Why?”

“ Because there’ d be so much more of one to wear out;
and — — ”

GOLDEN BELLS,

91

“Susan! I am wise!” he exclaimed. “And here we
are.”

He pulled up the horse at a house in the outskirts of the
town— an almost black house of two stories, built of brick,
with here and there a patch of crumbling rough-cast plaster,
standing by itself on about half an acre of neglected
mould. Several of the windows were broken, and not one,
she noticed, had blind or curtain — it had obviously not
been inhabited for many years.

“Get down first,” said he, “and give me a hand.
Steady! There. Now come along with me.” He took a
chain and fastened the horse by a padlock to an iron ring
fixed in a curbstone. “There, that’s safe. Here, you’d
better take my hand, and mind how you go; there’s man-
traps all the way up to the front door.”

“What house is this? We’re not going — in?” asked
Susan, who did not like the prospect of going into such a
house with such a man.

“What — you say we’re not? That isn’t true. We are.
This is where I live. What makes you look as if you’d
never seen anybody’s house before?”

“ I was thinking, ” said Susan, “that if I had a house
like that at Zion Farm, I shouldn’t live much here.”

With all her freedom (by comparison) from superstition,
and all her unwillingness to seem afraid, that was not
what she was thinking of. She was remembering that,
however she might herself laugh at such nonsense, this,
after all, was Old Nick the wizard, and that this was his
den. It was wonderful what a different aspect his reputa-
tion took in her eyes now that she was alone with him,
away from home, and that he had brought her to a house
which every moment became more ghastly. What did he
want with her here? The creature himself was becoming
less and less grotesque. Could stupid Tom Polwarth be
right, after all? Must a woman always make a fool of her-
self when, in her vanity, she scoffs at things she does not
understand?

“No,” she said, “I — I don’t think I’ll go in; I think ITl
wait outside. You see — the horse might be stolen, if he’s
left alone.”

“No he mightn’t. Nobody could unlock that paddock,
and to file through that chain would take an hour? Be-
sides, if anybody meddled with that chain but me some-
thing would go off that might blow his hands to bits, or
blind him. One has to be careful these bad times, and get-
ting one’s horse held every time one stops is dear. Now
then. Come along. ’ ’

Susan looked round, and recoiled. Peril is assuredly not
the less real for being vague, and a sense of her position.

92

GOLDEN BELLS.

impposing there were peril, was anything but vague. No j
that she thought of it, not a creature at Porthtyre knew .
this expedition ; it was no longer with relief, but with di I
may, that she remembered how cunningly Old Nick hf
avoided the village, and by what lonely ways he had struc i
the high-road. If she never came out again not a soul ; !
home would have a notion where to look for her, and n
body but a helpless widow and a scatterbrain would ca !
to try. A dozen wild stories, such as used to be told roui
the farm chimney-corner at Christmas-time, came into h i
head— tales, for instance, of how girls had been trappy i
into the service of witches, and, having seen and done £ ;
sorts of horrible things, were thrown into the caldron wh( i
their wages became due; how a woman’s heart was j
grand element in all the most potent spells. A wizard w, !
not like to prove better than a witch, and that she had |
heart she by this time knew exceedingly well. !

But meantime Old Nick was inserting in the door ahu ;
and complicated key. Having turned that, he produc' |
another, still more complex, with movable wards thi
shifted, and turned that also. !

“I don’t keep servants,” said he. “There! You j
going to see what — but come along.” .

“I think not to day,” said Susan. “ The butter’s spc i
ing; I’ll see it another time.” •

“ Why, > ou’re afraid ! Oh 1” i

Such a taunt from such a creature was more than a: i
girl of spirit could stand. What would Oliver say? Prc I
ably that she was quite right to be afraid, but that way of 1 i
regarding it did not occur to her. She was afraid, 1 1
being told of it made her reckless. How they would ,
laugh at her, how she would have to laugh at herself, '
the idea of letting herself he frightened out of anything [
a lot of idle tales, if idle they were. And then— curios: i
was beginning to burn. Fatima was terribly afraid
enter Bluebeard’s chamber, hut she went in. , . .

And so did Susan. And the house was not so forhidd] ;
inside. Without a sign of comfort, there were many :
rude wealth, if not luxury. The entrance passage Vi
itself converted into a room, furnished with carpets a j
cushions, queer little tables, some hearing heavy lamps a;
candlesticks, and carved stools. The staircase, up wh i
he led her, was so thickly and softly carpeted that ((
could not hear her feet, and scarcely feel them. But if
whole air was charged with dust and disorder, and spid
were everywhere.

And both the wealth and the disorder reached a elm
when Old Nick, using no fewer than three keys, opene
door at the head of the first flight of stairs. The room \

GOLDEN BELLS.

93

>t piled up from floor to ceiling with guineas, according
Tom Polwarth’s legend, but even Susan, inexperienced
she was, could tell that she saw a great many guineas’
blue. A girl of to-day would have clapped her hands
id danced for joy, unless she should think ecstasy before
possible dealer lacking both in prudence and in dignity.
>r there were all sorts of things that people travel all
I rope to find and buy, or to copy and sell.

Many of these things Susan recognized as having seen
the neighboring farms— antique pieces of furniture whose
irners must have stared that anybody — not being either
conjurer ora lunatic — should offer a few shillings for;
eces of plate that had probably escaped the melting-pot
aringthe Civil Wars; articles which, instinct and some
;ight experience told her, had been smuggled out of
fiance by ladies and gentlemen flying from the guillotine,
|id sold by them for bread — the Peggy herself had many
time had such passengers; lace, pictures, weapons; in
^ort, all sorts and conditions of precious lumber. She
irned cold for a moment at the sight of the weapons; they
ere, under the circumstances, somewhat suggestive.
Ut:

“What a lot of fine things I” said she. “Are all these
Durs?”

' ‘ ‘ Every one. What do you think of the lot, eh? What’s
worth, I mean, as it stands?”

If ‘Oh, dear! Twenty guineas? Twenty- five? A great
I’m sure!”

“They’ve cost me five hundred guineas. And they’ll
nng me in five thousand! Not bad bargains, eh? Nine
andred per cent, profit, my dear. ’ ’

“ Five thousand guineas ! Is that what you’ve brought
.e to see?”

“Bah! No. I can show you them any time. If you
id five thousand guineas, what would you do?”

“ Oh, five thousand things!”

“A ^inea apiece, eh?”

First, I should buy Zion Farm.”

“ That is your first wish. Good. And your second?”
“Pay everybody my father owes.”

“ H’m ! And the third?” he asked, looking like a demon
)dfather.

“ Give Tom Pol war th ”

“ What P’' he almost screamed.

“ A new boat,” said Susan.

“ Oh — that all ! And a second-hand one would do just as
ell. Susan, it will take a long time to do all that with
itter and cheese.”

“ Indeed it will, ” she sighed. But ”

94

GOLDEN BELLS,

“But what? Can’t you speak out? If there is one thing
I hate it is a man or woman that can’t say a thing out and
have done.”

“I was only going to say that — I’m going to try.”

“You are a beautiful girl! You can plan; you can work
hard; you can hold your tongue; you can tell the truth;
you are economical beyond praise. You would pay your
father’s creditors — that is noble; I say so, who am one of
them 1 But if you should churn ten thousand guineas out
of your cream— butter of gold— it would not be enough to
buy back Zion Farm. ’ ’

“ I’m sure,” said Susan, “ it’s a poor enough place now.”

“Eh — you would bargain? But no. Behold that for
which the Queen of Sheba would give her eyes!”

He drew from the depths of an iron chest a leather roll,
from which, after much untying of knots, he took a long
strip of something, neither parchment nor paper, yet not
unlike them, and with the greatest delicacy of handling held
it open before Susan’s bewildered eyes. It was covered
with strange, faded marks. Was it a spell ? He had bidden
her name tliree wishes. What could it all mean? She was
even beginning to feel excited. Curiosity had burned out
the last vestige of fear.

“ I come from the East,” said Old Nick, with some little
dignity. “ I come from a great, beautiful lake called Van,
in the land of Vasbouragan, whence Tigris flows. You
never heard of that lake — don’t say you have, for you
haven’t ! But Shamiram reigned there, and Yewa bathed
in it; and Lilith, too” (he crossed himself) “for aught I
can tell. There are many columns there, with old writing;
and I learned to read them, because everybody said that
the gold of paradise was at the bottom of the lake, and that
anybody who could read the columns would And out how
to get the gold, and the way to Ophir as well.”

“And did you And ”

“No. Only chronicles of the war of the Great Shami-
ram. But when I grew up, and carried nothing but my
knowledge with me out into the world, I chanced once to
And myself at the city of Mosoul. There I took service, as
scribe, with a hound of a Turk, who said I robbed and
cheated him, and had me beaten on the soles of my feet till
I could not stand. Ah— learning is a dangerous thing!”

“Then you had not cheated him?” asked Susan, listen-
ing in the midst of golden lumber to this outlandish story
as in a dream.

“ Not more than a dog of a Turk deserves at Christian
hands. But I was beaten, all the same; and robbed be-
sides; and I carried only one jewel away from Mosoul.”
“Is it here?”

95

GOLDEN BELLS.

“ It is before your eyes; it is this paper of Egyptian reed,
written with words like the columns by the lake, that no-
body could read but me! It tells of a great Phoenician city
in the west, named by the name of its mother, Tyre; a
greater Carthage; an eighth wonder of the world. At first
I thought it was all lies ; and I hate to be told lies. But the
more I learned, and the more I read, and the more I
thought, the more I knew it to be true. I had followed up
the history of the paper ; it had been a talisman, an heir-
loom ; I traced it back St. Mesrop knows how far. I bought
up everything with writing on it from Druze and Arab;
and light I got often— much light sometimes ; and those no
use to me I sold at a thousand per cent, of profit to learned
men in Venice and in Rome; or to the Jews! Ah — it is a
pleasure to make profit out of the Jews, who think them-
selves so sharp — bah ! I studied the science of geography.
I — but you are not learned. You would not understand
how I came to know that the great city must be buried
under Zion Farm!’^

“Under Zion Farm?”

“ Or hard by. I would not take a million of guineas for
Zion Farm!”

“ Oh, sir! is this all true?”

“What — you think I would tell m|/seZ/lies? No. For
forty years long I have been wandering like the children
of Israel in the wilderness in search of my promised land.
And would I sell it, like that fool Esau, for a mess of — but-
ter and cream? If you want Zion Farm for yourself,
there’s only one way.”

“ What is that?”

“Take-ME!”

As the creature’s meaning flashed upon her, Susan was
conscious of nothing but a fourth wish— to sink into the
ground.

“Oh, sir,” she faltered, “ I don’t really want anything
at all.”

“Yes, you do! So don’t you tell lies. You want all the
diamonds and rubies and emeralds and camel-loads of gold
that has been waiting for me for two thousand years — and
all you can buy with them. You Avant to save your fa-
ther from the gallows ; and to buy all your friends second-
hand boats ; and wear silk and cashmere, and give up
churning. Why, I’ll give you this room you stand in for
a dowry, and not feel the loss— not feel it so very much, I
mean. You’re no fool. No, don’t tell me you are, because
you’re nothing of the kind. It isn’t as if I was ugly, or
shabby, or seven feet high ; and I was washing myself this
morning two whole hours. What are you standing there

96

GOLDEN BELLS.:

for, staring? Why the great Queen. Shamiram would jump
at me out of her grave!” . , , .

It was true that Susan was staring, very wide-eyed in-
deed. But utter bewilderment did not last more than a
moment. The fright and excitement through which she
had passed very nearly broke mto an outburst of half-
hysterical laughter at the sight of that grotesque figure,
pleading, threatening, gesticulating— trying at once to buy
her and to bully her into taking him for a husband. It
was as much as she could do to keep the laughter down.

“Oh— but I can’t. I can’t indeed!” was all she could
say.

“ Why not? I tell you it’s your duty to pay your father’s^
creditors. Do you suppose I sha’n’t make you a good hus-
band ”

“It’s not that indeed— but— but— but— it is all so :/

(“ ridiculous,” she had almost said; but wisely refrained);

“I’ve never seen a woman I wanted to marry before, ’ ’ said
he ; “I’ve never frittered away a thing— love no more than
money. You won’t find a man like me in a hundred years ^
and then you’ll be too old. Be my wife— do you hear? Bo
the happiest young woman in the world.”

“Please don’t say anything more! We’ve been good
friends— indeed, I can’t be anything more.”

“Then ”

He looked so suddenly furious that she recoiled, and al-
most screamed. “ Then— I must find a man to drive you
back again,” said he.

“Oh, I am so sorry. But it would never have done.
I’m not what you think me. In reality I’m fiighty; I’m
foolish; I’m very extravagant, I’m ”

“ You mean you’re in love with somebody else!” he sud-
denly stormed. “No— hold your tongue. Don’t tell me
you’]’e not. You are!”

His eyes seemed to pierce her through and through.

Had he been sent mad, as so many have been, by a dream
of treasure? Susan, as she was driven home in silence by
a man from the inn, with whom Old Nick had made an ex -
ceedingly hard bargain, would certainly have thought so
had she not been impressed by the evidence of his actual
wealth, by his weird, grotesque, and outlandish ways, by
his reputation for wizardry, and for his display of incom-
prehensible learning. That roll of papyrus also, with its
cabalistic characters, had excited her imagination. Yet,
being sane, what could it all mean— a buried treasure city
under Zion Farm?

No — that at any rate was absurd. Generations of
Graiths had been digging and ploughing, and nobody had

GOLDEN BELLS.

97

ever heard of their finding anything out of the way. And
then there was the offer of ten thousand guineas in posses-
sion, and unknown millions in prospect, to her — Susan Am-
brose. She knew not whether to laugh or to cry, to be
grateful or angry.

One thing she never felt — no, not for a moment — the
temptation proper to all well-regulated heroines to sell
themselves, body and soul, for the sake of their relations
and friends,. Living too far south to have heard of Auld
Kobin Gray, it never even came into her head that money
can convert a wrong into a duty — that martyrdom itself
can excuse selling to one man the heart that belongs to
another. True, there was nothing between her and Oliver
— except everything; at least on her side.

But what would her strange old master do? Would he
bear to feel that his attempted bribe had ended only in the
barren betrayal of his secret — would he respect hers?
For that he had read her secret as well as he had read that
of Queen — who was it? — she was alarmingly assured.
What if she had made him the enemy of her father — of
Oliver, w^herever he might be? What if he dismissed her
from the farm? He had given her his secret for nothing;
and though she had no faith in it, he had. And nothing
for nothing — that was not his way. For the first time she
carried home with her a heavy heart ; for the first time she
was haunted with fear for the lad whom she had armed
with brave words and sandwiches to conquer the world.

At the entrance of the village the gig was stopped by
Tom Polwarth, who, without a symptom of shyness, rather
roughly bade her get down and walk to the smithy.

“Miss Susan,” said he, “where have you been driving
with Old Nick? I’m Oliver’s friend; and I won’t have it
— so there.”

“ I suppose,” said Susan, haughtily, “ T may drive with
whom I please. And— I’m not going to be watched, Tom.
I’m not a smuggler, and you’re not a coastguard.”

“I’m no hand at an argue. Miss Susan. I’m not clever,
and you are. But mind this — next time you go for a drive
with Old Nick, wizard or no wizard. I’ll break his bones.”

“Oh, Tom, Tom, don’t be hard on me,” she cried, with
no more argue in her than he, making up her mind at last
— to cry.

And to that Tom could find no reply.

II.

Was Nicephorus Bedrosian a stark, staring madman?
If a sharp-witted girl’s insight failed her, how can mine
succeed ?

98

GOLDEN BELLS.

Not every riddle has its answer. But that the miser-
student (as such the victim of two madnesses) believed in
himself, none could imagine who saw him alone. The first
thing he did when Susan drove off was to dash his cocked
hat on the floor and trample it, regardless of cost, out of
recognition. Then he pulled off his coat, kicked off his
boots, and heaved a prodigious sigh. Having thus relieved
himself, he picked up his hat, looked at it ruefully for a
moment, threw it into the iron chesty and slammed down
the lid savagely.

Having put what he evidently considered the outward
and visible sign of a folly out of sight, he threw himself on
a cushion, slowly filled the bowl of a long pipe half full of
tobacco, and sat smoking until it became too dark to see
the rings of smoke he blew. Then, placing a tallow candle
in one of the sconces of a silver candelabrum bearing tlie
achievement of a due et pair^ he took writing materials,
and, with much consideration, wrote, resting his paper on
his knee as he sat cross-legged, for more than an hour.
Eising, he folded the paper carefully in three, put it under
the candelabrum, and smoked another pipe through. Then
he put another candle into another sconce and, by the dou •
ble light, pored over the papyrus, comparing it with plans
and memoranda, until the town clock had struck ten, and
Eedruth was sleeping.

I deal with facts only, leaving theories for scholars.
That there may have been a Phoenician settlement in those
parts is suggested, no doubt, by such names as Porthtyre,
Zion Farm, and Hanno Sands. That Solomon’s friend.
King Hiram, knew of the country, many an antiquary has
been prepared to stake his soul. That a written record
should have traveled down through the ages may be in-
credible, but is not impossible. That forty years given up
to the search should have ended in imaginary success is in-
evitable ; that it should have ended in real success is not
more like a myth than the coincidences of every day. Be-
yond that I dare not go. But I do know that it was past
eleven when Nicephorus Bedrosian was startled by a very
peculiar whistle indeed.

The start was only for a moment, consequent upon any
interruption of profound study. He rose without the least
hurry, and then, lighting himself with one candle, having
thriftily blown out the other, he went down -stairs and
opened the door.

sjc ♦ *

‘ ‘ Come on, ’ ’ said he. ’ ’

There entered the hall a big man, in rough sailor’s
clothes, yet not bearing himself like a sailor.

“The Santissima Stella’s otf the shore, then?” asked

GOLDEN BELLS.

^9

Nicephorus. “ Anything for me? But it mustn’t be dear.

I was cheated by that plate of the Marquise de Brehon. It
was a fraud — I gave nearly the whole value ; I must give
less the next time. One shilling an ounce for silver; not
one halfpenny more. Don’t say I shall, for I shall not;
no, not one farthing more. St. Mesrop! Lancelot Am-
brose!”

“Yes. Shut the door. I’ve been a prisoner in France;

I escaped in the Santissima Stella. ’ ’

“ And you come to me? You expect me to hide you till
you can get off again? No. Nobody comes into my house
— least of all you.”

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Ambrose, with a sneer. “I
don’t want to be taken, of course; but if I am, I’ve got
what’ll make Mr. Pitt set me free again.”

“Oh! Useful n^ws about the war. But why do you
come to me? I don’t buy news.”

“I don’t know why you shouldn’t. But I’m going to
take mine to a better market. Some’s for the minister;
some’s for the Exchange!”

“ Then why the devil do you come to me?”

“ Because I want clothes; and the means to get to Lon-
don; and — and a dozen things. Because I want money.
For what else does anybody come to you?”

“ Money — when you owe me — no, Mr. Lancelot Ambrose.
News is no security. News is always lies.”

“ But suppose I give you security thatTl cover all I owe
you, and as much more as you like to offer?”

“ It must be plenty then. One shilling an ounce to buy;
sixpence an ounce to advance; not one farthing more.”

“ Eubbish! Do you think I’ve been stealing spoons?”

‘ ‘ Or forks. It is all the same. ’ ’

“ You old fool— look here !”

“St. Nicephorus!”

Well might Old Nick exclaim when the miserable gleam
of the dip became transformed into rainbow light by what
it fell upon — a magnificent diamond set in a golden disk,
and cut with richer effect than has ever been obtained by
any recognized rule.

“ Pretty good security that,” said Ambrose. “Eh?”

But not a word did Nicephorus Bedrosian answer. He
stood like one wrapt, not in mere iridescence, but in a vis-
ion of glories unseen by the outward eye.

“ Give it into my hands,” he said, at last, in a voice hol-
low and trembling.

“ Yes. You may handle it. What do you say to an ad-
vance of a thousand — say, for a year?”

“What do I say?” echoed Nicephorus, examining the.

100

GOLDEN BELLS,

disk of the rim that was engraved after the manner of a
talisman. “ What do I say — what do I say?”

‘ ‘ Yes. What do you say to two thousand for six months ?
That’s pretty fair.”"

“Where did you get this, Lancelot Ambrose?”

“ Oh— in France. Where else does one get things when
one’s a prisoner of war?”

‘ ‘ In France ? Y ou lie. ’ ’

“You old rogue! Do you suppose I picked it up on the
seashore?”

“All the same, you lie. But it is all the same. It is
business. What have you more?”

“Will you take that on my terms — two thousand down?’ ’

“Mr. Ambrose, I will advance three thousand if you
will tell me where this was found.”

“No, no.”

“ Four thousand ”

“ Nor twenty thousand. Come; people in your business
don’t ask questions, you know. I might have got it by
piracy, or on the highway. I might have been robbing a

church. I might have ” He shuddered for a moment,

and glanced sharply over his shoulder. “Haven’t you
got anything to drink, man?”

“Surely,” said Nicephorus. He did not leave the pas-
sage where they were speaking, but filled a tumbler from
a small cask in a corner. Lancelot Ambrose put it to his
lips, but set it down.

“No; I’ve changed my mind,” said he. “ Give me some
water. No; I won’t have anything at all.”

“ If I wanted to poison you I would not do it that way,”
said Old Nick, with a sneering chuckle. “See!” and he
emptied the tumbler at a draught, only betraying its po-
tency by a single gasp as the spirit went down. “You
wei e going to say you might have got it by ”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Old Nick fell again to examining the disk of gold, and the
characters engraved thereon, now and then stealing a
glance at Ambrose, who waited patiently for the charm of
the gem to work in due time.

“ He won’t take twenty thousand guineas, eh?” Old Nick
was brooding. “Not twenty thousand to tell where this
was found. That means there is more to be found, and he
knows where. He says he has been in France, eh? That
means France is just the place where he has not been.
And he brings me the very talisman of the papyrus ; the
seal of Baal-Hamoun; the sign of the great city; its sa-
cred safeguard, by which it shall be known, and whereby
it shall stand or fall. Saints and angels, that the great
City of Treasure is found ; fiends and demons, that it is

GOLDEN BELLS.

I

loi

j

found by him who does not know what he has found j
What is to be done?” !

‘‘I’m waiting,” said Ambrose. |

“ One moment still Yes; what is to be done? It

not as if I had to deal with a common fool. It is not as i|
I had a hold over him ; if it is true he has secrets of state
he will laugh at me ; if he was afraid of me he would no!
come. Ah! the feet follow the heart and the heart the
maiden. That is true. And if the maiden how much more
;the gold! The heart the maiden, the feet the heart, and
■the rival the feet of the lover. Mr. Ambrose, you shall
Ihave two thousand guineas. ”

“When?” :

“To-morrow. Can you come?” ;

“I must, I suppose. I’ll give the same signal at the!
‘Same hour, and I’ll bring a memorandum with me. When
I pay back the money I don’t want to find the jewel goneJ
And it must be kept in some safe place.”

“It shall all be arranged. To-morrow, then, you give
me this diamond to hold as security for two thousand
pounds. On my head be it, Mr. Ambrose.”

“ Good-night, then. ”

Having noisily locked the door on his visitor. Old Nick
hastily put on his old hat, and reopening the door without
any noise at all, and as silently reclosing it, he was in less
than a minute following the sound of a slow and heavy
tramp on the road toward Porthtyre. Yes, he was right I
Toward Porthtyre ! Whither else should it be than toward
Zion Farm?

III.

Scarcely would his worst enemies have known Old Nick
when, late the next evening, he crawled home again, in
such an exhausted state that he had scarcely strength left
to open his front door.

He was a wretched object. His new, or at any rate his
best, clothes were matted into ruin with mud and wet
sand ; his oldest and worst hat had been lost ; his beard,
the only thing about himself he respected, had become like
seaweed ; his eyes were bloodshot ; his slippers were in rags
—he was not fit to hold a caudle to a scarecrow. But ho
seemed, in some strange way, to have grown inches taller
since yesterday, and his eyes were shot not only with
blood, but with fire. There was nothing wretched about
the man, whatever the things about him might be.

He threw himself upon a couch in the passage, not with
a sigh of relief, but with the cry of joy that solitude allowed
him to indulge. After forty years he found the great lost|

102

GOLDEN BELLS.

city of his dreams of gold. It had been hard and hideous
work, tracking the discoverer ; but, now that it was over,
bodily exhaustion only added zest to his fever of joy.

There had been nothing tragic about him thus far to out-
ward eyes; only a grotesque dwarf with strange ways,
preying upon other men’s needs, and grabbing together
treasures that he neither spent nor enjoyed. Nobody but
himself knew what his life had been from the day when
that cabalistic papyrus had fallen into his hands in an
eastern city forty long years ago. Since that moment not
a thought of his had failed to bear upon a search in which
greed itself became a romance beside which the wildest of
love stories seemed poor and pale. And then there was the
pride that the secret of two thousand years had been kept
to be revealed to him, a poor, misshapen rayah from the
shore of Lake Van. Knowledge had become power indeed.
He bought all old things for what they might teach, he
sold them that they might carry him on his road. He
had narrowed the search until he had driven its object
into a corner, till a hand came out of the papyrus pointing
to so remote yet so definite a spot as the district round Zion
Farm. Then, by a hundred arts and crafts, he had mas-
tered the farm itself ; and now

Perhaps it had not been all gold-hunger in the beginning.
It may be that the humble young student of prehistoric
columns, with the genius of a Champollion, had been fired
by ambitions, or perhaps by dreams merely, purer than
any gold. But that is an oid story, older than the wars
of the great Queen Shamiram. And no doubt dire distrust
would cloud his faith in himself and his mission now and
again ; he might have distorted his brain with perpetual
brooding over one idea; he might have read everything
falsely, and have been working at a locked door all these
years with a wrong key.

But when, within but a few miles of the spot where he
had placed the city of liis faith, he had seen with his own
eyes the very palladium of that city, its inseparable seal
and sacred talisman, as minutely described in the papyrus
of Mosoul, then, indeed, he no longer dreamed; he no
longer believed; he knew. He had not been mad; he had
not been on a false track ; his life had not been in vain. He
could have sung Nunc Dimittis, were it not that the tri-
umph to which he looked forward had to do with every-
thing except dying. The touch of human nature that had
come to him from the fingers of Susan A^mbrose just when
he was growing doubtful and tired and old, and had found
kindness and honesty for the first time in all his days,
shriveled away— for he had seen with his living eyes the
seal of Baol-Hamoun I

GOLDEN BELLS.

103

Nay, he traced its robber to the great city’s grave; he
had noted every footmark; he had seen him enter into the
darkness of the dunes ; he could already see in fancy the
loosely-buried temples, the palaces, piled breast high with
gold and gems. Was it not written in the papyrus of Mo-
soul?

And was a secret like this to be shared with mortal man?
Saints, angels, and devils — ten thousand times no !

He was from the East, and he had but one idea in the
world.

♦ SH >(£ >(c * * Hi

Having dressed himself in his normal rags, thrown his
spoiled clothes out of sight, carefully removed every visible
grain of sand from his face and hands, and arranged his
beard, he transacted some business in the town with the
most minute punctiliousness, not even forgetting to get
witnesses to his signature of the document under the
candelabrum. But it was all with the unconsciousness of
a somnambulist ; nor did he touch food all day. Till the
hour before midnight struck, it might have been minutes
or it might have been weeks for aught he knew. And not
till the signal of the Santissima Stella had been thrice
given did he start from his dream and unbar the door.

' ‘ I thought you were asleep, ’ ’ said the ex banker, enter-
ing. ‘ ‘ There’s nothing so unbusiness-like as unpunctuality.
It isn’t likely I should be recognized by anybody in these
clothes and at this hour; but there’s no good in running
useless danger. Is it all right? Have you got the money
here?”

“ The money?” asked Nicephorus, taken aback for a mo-
ment ; for, indeed, he had clean forgotten that part of the
bargain. “Why, of course I have the money. Two
thousand, all in good notes ; unless you would like to take
some of it in your own.”

“Have you been drinking?” asked Ambrose, roughly.
All his smooth manners had gone. If Nicephorus had
changed so had he ; he might have been taken for a reck-
less brigand, instead of an unfortunate but honest gentle-
man.

“Have you brought the seal of Baal-Hamoun?”

“The— what? Oh, you mean the diamond. Yes. And
the memorandum as well. So there’s no need for another
minute’s delay. Where’s the diamond to be kept till I
take it out of pawn? How am I to know you won’t be off
with it to Jericho, or wherever your country may be?”

‘ ‘ I am not a banker, Mr. Ambrose. I do not run away
with what is not mine. But if you doubt the honesty of
an orthodox Gregorian Christian, by St, Nicephorus I’ll

104

GOLDEN BELLS.

make it mine. I’ll buy the seal. Don’t say I won’t ’ i
cause I will.” ’ i

“You’ll buy it? Why, I know something about jew( ^
I mean to sell this to some crowned head, when pe^i
comes, for a quarter of a million.”

“I’ll give you a quarter of a million, and not one farthi !
more. ’ ’

“You! Are you mad, Mr. Bedrosian?” |

And certainly there was a gleam in Old Nick’s e^
that was exceedingly queer, and there was a tremor ini I
hand. :

“No, I am not mad, ” he said, sharply. “ Perhaps I c >
sell it at once .for a profit ; perhaps I know the Orien 1
markets; perhaps fifty things. And if I was mad, wii
is that to you? It is business to take a madman’ at
word. Did you spare Oliver Graith because he was I
fool?” i

A furious oath burst from the once well-governed lips i
Ambrose, as he glanced sharply behind him. Somethi; i
had evidently changed the man even more than Nic!
phorus Bedrosian had been changed. “Look here y '

old villain, none of that, or, by ’ ’ ’ I

Nicephorus stroked his beard solemnly. “ I think sor i
cognac will be good for you,” said he. “You would ni
have any yesterday because you were afraid. But m
haps you are afraid of something now?” j

“ Afraid? Neither of man nor devil.” I

“Of ghost, maybe?” |

“ What — what do you mean?” he asked, with wanderii
eyes. And no doubt it was bad for the nerves to sit
midnight in that dismal house with a very possible ma I
man. i

“ Only that your teeth chatter. I fear you have take I
a chill. Cognac is good for a chill. ” !

‘ ‘ Give it me, then. ’ ’ |

Nicephorus went to the cask in the corner and filled tv 1
large wine-glasses which he had taken from a bureau. B !
was a long time over the process of fetching the glass< j
and filling them ; indeed, it had taken him a full couple < f
minutes to find them. He handed one glass to Ambro{ •
and then took a sip from the other. S

“You seemed to have your liquor handier last night, j
said Ambrose. |

“Everything is possible,” said Nicephorus, gravely, a'

most solemnly, gazing at the talisman that blazed betwee ^
the two men. No, not even Lancelot Ambrose had bee =
changed by murder so much as Nicephorus Bedrosian ha
been changed by the touch of that talisman from the gr<i

GOLDEN BELLS.

105

lesque Creatin'e who had made love, after his strange fash-

that there should he better brandy,” said Am-
rtx»e, with an ugly laugh. “ Got in the usual way.

I “I bought ii from Captain Vasco — young Oliver Graith s

i^“*Caii’t you hold your infernal tongue? What are you
Llways talking about-him for? Wh^’s he to you?

! “Captain Vasco? A great deal. He bought the best
\>raxidj, and he had a great connection with the French-
jiien who had plate to sell. ”

“Oh— that all. I thought— .

“I thought you went otf in the Peg to bpain.

I J “So I did; but the confounded brute chose to go down
y® the Hanno Sands. ”

; “ Off Hanno Sands, eh? I see.

i‘g00 — what?” exclaimed Ambrose, with a start, and
^i^in looking behind him. “ What’s that noise? ^
'^Only the wind. This house always rattles in the

Rattles, you call it? Why, it’s getting like the night
»^^hen the Peg— but come to business. I m not come here
drink brandy in a gale of wind. What s to be done

about this diamond?”

“ Does anybody know you are here?

'J “Should I be here if anybody did? Haven t I got to

Nt-Sr thiSS^ou abroad. Nobody thiaka

iron will ever come home. Nobody would miss you if you
iwere to die,” said Nicephorus, as if thinking amud.

But a furious gust of wind that made the house shake
Ifowned his words of ill-omen. It was, indeed, as it the
;torm wind that wrecked the Lively Peg were blowing

T“^hat is written round that seal,” went onNicephoru^
iblemnly, “says many things in a strange tongue,
me is that whoso taketh it from its place shall fear no death
lor hurt from the hand of man, but shall live to be cursed

wherever he goeth by Baal-Harnoun.” „ „ . .y

“And who the devil was Baal-Hamoun? Confound the

wind . 1

“ Baal-Hamoun was the great god of an ancient people.

Do you sell it to me?” ■ i /-.i,

“ Sell what? I can hardly hear for the wind. Oh— sell
the diamond. This cognac of yours is confoundedly
fetrong. I must have some more. I believe you ve given
it to me to take me in. But— what did you say? A quar-
ter of a million? How can you raise a quarter of a million,
-^you?”

106

GOLDEN BELLS.

“ I shall raise more than that in a few days. I will give
you a bond. You agree?”

“When shall I see the money? How’s a quarter of a
million to be paid?”

“ What is written round the seal,” Nicephorus repeated,
more solemnly than before, “ says many things in a strange
tongue. And another— it says to me — is that Hanno Sands
are made of gold.”

“Hanno Sands!” cried Ambrose, starting up. “What
the devil do you know of Hanno Sands? But I’m dream-
ing, I believe. You were talking of a quarter of a million ;
and I thought you said Hanno Sands I How is it to be
paid? Can’t you speak louder? I can’t hear a word you
say.”

“ Oh, it will be paid. Everything is always paid— all in
good time.”

“ Yes; it’s easy to say that,” said Ambrose. “I’m con-
foundedly sleepy— and cold 1 I say, Oliver — are you sure
that boat’s crew will be good for a quarter of a million?
You’re quite sure? Then take that ! Only, for God’s sake,
don’t stare! Yes; I have it; two hundred and thirty-five
yards northeast and by north — what are you staring for?
What’s the use of all that to you? You’d only squander it
as you did before. Are you sure they’ll come? Will you
swear? Oh, Susan won’t mind. You will stare, will you?
Then take that again! They won’t find you there. It’s
not my fault. It’s Providence, not me. What wonderful
red fiowers! Oliver, for Heaven’s sake, don’t stare.”

Nicephorus sat stroking his beard, in Oriental dignity,
as Ambrose rambled on, his voice growing weaker and
weaker — further and further away. And when he ceased
to ramble, and when his breathing became deep and heavy,
Nicephorus still sat on silently. And after even the
breathing itself was heard no longer, still on sat Niceph-
orus, solemly stroking his beard.

And meanwhile the wind rose and roared.

IV.

What a terrible night!” said Mrs. Graith, as the wind,
sweeping from the sea, beat against the smithy with all
its fury.

‘ ‘ Ay, ” said Tom Polwarth, gloomily. “We didn’t use to
have this like weather once upon a time. And ’ ’ he added,
his eyes turned on Susan, who was sewing in silence, “ if I
had my way we wouldn’t use to have it again.”

“ I should like to have it always,” said Mrs. Graith, try-
ing to look cheerful— for Susan, whose duty that was, was
neglecting it utterly for once, while Tom was unaccount-

GOLDEN DELLS.

107

ably self-assertive and severe : so that the task of looking
pleasant, when it felt and sounded as if all the ghosts from
all the wrecks round Porthtyre were swarming, had to fall
upon her. “ If it was always like that nobody would ever
go to sea.’’ And she sighed.

Tom gazed upon her blankly. “I’m afraid the fish
wouldn’t walk ashore,” said he. “And, for that matter,
I’d as lief be afioat as on land. There’d be something to do ;
and there’s one good thing about a ship — whatever hap-
pens, you know where you are; and if you do go to
Davy Jones, ’tisall in the night’s work; but ashore you
might be anywhere.”

I wonder why there never used to be such weather,”
said Mrs. Graith ; “and why we have it now. It blew like

this the night before Oliver Oh, Susan, I do wonder

where he is now !’ ’

Susan laid down her work, and tried to smile ; though in
that angry and disheartening blast faith was hard. It was
not one of those winds that sweep cares like so mnch dust
away, but one of those that every moment startle the heart,
and fill it with forebodings, even without cause. And how
much more when one we love is out in the storm of life,
and such a wind is cannonading a rocky shore? The
thought of the bark of life, and of all it signifies, is blown
home to the dullest and most prosaic mind. “Mother,”
she said, “we mustn’t send a thought after him to weaken
him. Wherever he is he is thinking of us as waiting
bravely ; and he must think true. ’ ’

“ Why there never used to be such weather? Why we
have it now?” echoed Tom, whose thoughts traveled slowly,
and who was not apt to drop a subject on rare occasions
when he took one fairly in hand. “ And why, if I had my
way, we wouldn’t nave it again? Ay, mistress; you’re
right ; the first time of this gale was when Old Nick brought
it with him to Porthtyre. Or when it brought him.”

“Tom!” exclaimed Susan. “What could that have to
do ”

“ That’s what I say,” said he, doggedly. “Till Old Nick
came here there was never such a wind ; and till there was
such a wind, there was no Old Nick. You can’t get over
that, it seems to me. No; you can’t, put it how you may.
There’s Old Nick; there’s the wind. And here’s Old Nick;
and here’s the wind again. Ay, Miss Susan; the lads may
say what they like about the devil’s own luck; but I know
what it leads to. Whether he’s steering you in a boat or
driving you in a gig, he knows where he means to bring
vou at the journey’s end. Luck? Ay— the lads have been
lucky, uncommon Jucky with the fishing; and so you’ve
been with the cows. Luck! You’ll see.”

Jos

GOLDEN BELLS.

It was grossly unfair of Tom Polwarth to return to the
subject of Old Nick before Mrs. Graith, so that Susan could
not defend her trip to Eedruth by a quarrel. Of course she
knew that every word of all this was aimed at her ; and
she felt all the more angry for being taken advantage of
— attacked without the power of reply. Well — tact was
not the blacksmith’s forte; but this was going decidedly
too far for a man whose shy deference had been at least
half his recommendation. However, he should not escape
unpunished ; so, while she held her tongue, she sharpened
it also all the more.

“ Oh, Mr. Polwarth !” cried Mrs. Graith. “ You frighten
me!”

‘ ‘ I want to. I want to frighten everybody, ’ ’ said he.
“ What do you think he’s been up to ever since this wind
began to blow?”

“Oh — what?”

“I say no Christian man, no, nor no Christian dog,
would go groping with a lantern off into the Sands. Cargo-
running? Not he; nor nobody else such nights as these;
not to say there’s no cargo being run. I’m no conjurer — T
leave that to them that are; but there’s Old Nick, and
there’s the wind. I’m no hand at an argue; but you can’t
get over that, try how you will. And how’d I put an end
to this here weather for good and all? You let me catch
him at his gig work again, and you’ll see.”

Anybody would have thought him inspired by jealousy ;
for sure no passion but the most foolish could have in-
spired such folly. But, however foolishly he talked, the
wildness of the night gave his words more effect than they
deserved, and he had certainly succeeded in making poor
Mrs. Graith as downright miserable as a woman can be
whose only son is wandering away in worlds unknown.

“Good-night, Mr. Polwarth,” she said at last, after a
long silence — and no wonder, for Susan was, for once,
vexed and nervous, and Tom had said enough words to last
him for three ordinary weeks to come.

Susan rose to follow her. But she lingered for a moment
to put av/ay her sewing, and, having given Mrs. Graith
time to reach her bedroom, turned round upon Tom as she
stood in the doorway.

“What do you mean,” she asked, “by making mother
wretched, and trying to make me, and speaking ill of peo-
ple you know nothing about and who have done you no
harm? I thought we were friends.”

“I’m yours. Miss Susan,” he said, gruffly.

“Then ”

“And it’s being your friend — and Mistress Graith’ s—
that’s what makes me say the farm’s no place for the likes

GOLDEN BELLS.

109

of you. It isn’t a good thing for a young woman, let alone
a real young lady out of Redruth, to get herself, leastways i
her name, mixed up with a wizard ” ;

“What?” exclaimed Susan, turning crimson and then
pale.

“ That’s what’s going on. Of course he’s naught but a
scaramouch to look at, and a bad ’un at that— Old Nick, I
mean; Imt what’s that to a conjurer? They have ways of
their own; confound ’em ”

“ Do they mean to say ”

“That you’ve sold yourself to Old Nick—for the dairy
and Lord knows what else; and that you’ll be a witch jmur* i
self before you’ve done. And your butter don’t come out
of common cows in a common way. Don’t you be vexed
at what they say ; there’s one or two I’ve heard say it that
won’t say it again when I’m by; and there’ll be one or two
more before I’ve done. I’m cock of this walk now Oliver j
Graith’s gone. Rut that won’t stop tongues wagging be- !
hind my back; and it’s the women worse than the men.” ^

Had it not been for that day’s adventure Susan would
have faced such crazy gossip with all the scorn it deserved.

But after what had happened, and with her new fear,
amounting almost to the contagion of belief, of her mas- •
ter’s malicious power, she was overwhelmed with humili-
ating and helpless anger.

“They say I have sold myself to that — creature for the
farm? Tom!”

“For the farm, and the dairy, and for roomfuls of gold
and silver piled up from floor to ceiling; and for Lord
knows what else besides— that’s what they say ; and for a
charm how to churn butter out of dew. I don’t believe it,
Miss Susan — not I. I’m not a fool. But that Old Nick’s a
wizard is certain sure; and if he hasn’t made a witch of
you yet, ’tis only because he hasn’t had the time.”

“I suppose you are right to tell me,” she said, sadly
and bitterly. “ But it is hard. I was doing so well — I was
almost getting rich; and now everybody — yes, everybody,
wants to drive us out of doors again ”

“ Not everybody. Miss Susan.”

“ Yes— everybody ! What else would you have us do?”

“ Leave you in the clutches of Old Nick I won’t — so there.
And turn out you nor Mistress Graith I won’t; so there
again. If ’tis cows you’re after, you look here ”

“Cows!”

“I’m no hand at an argue. Miss Susan; but you look
here, all the same. You’ve got to leave that wizard. And
if you’re afraid of leaving him, or of him, I’m not. ITl
just tell him to come on. And if you want to stop people
talking— they won’t talk of— of ”

110

GOLDEN BELLS.

‘‘Of a witch— of a ”

“Of Susan Polwarth!” he burst out, bringing his fist
down on the dresser. “There; it’s out now. I’m not up
to your mark— I know that, worse luck, as well as you;
but I can fight your battles; and the more of ’em I’ve got
to fight, the better for me. Here’s both my fists; and
you’ll want ’em. You may do what you like with the
smithy — I couldn’t stand it like what it used to be before
you came; and the mistress would have a home she
wouldn’t have to pay for. I wouldn’t go to the Feathers
more than once or twice a week ; and you should keep the
best cow in the parish if I had to go to France for her.
And then let Old Nick himself touch you if he dare!”

“Oh, Tom,” cried poor Susan— “I can’t; I wouldn’t
have had you talk like that for everything in the world ; I
know you mean it kindly— I’m sorry I was cross to you ;
but don’t take away the only friend I’ve got in the world 1”

“ Who’s he? If you mean ”

“ Why, who but you? And how can we keep friends if
-if ”

“I don’t ask you to care for me. I’ll chance that. All
I want is for you to have somebody to fight your battles ;
and a fist to hold on by. I’ll do the caring ”

“ Good-night,” said Susan, gently, holding out her hand.
They were not up to fine speeches — at least in those days —
round Porthtyre. “No, Tom; that can’t be. It isn’t that
I put myself above you, for Heaven knows I don’t; and it
isn’t that I’m not grateful, for indeed and indeed lam;
but I can’t be a wife to you — and I don’t want to lose our
only friend ”

“ Oh— don’t tell me because you’ve promised /^m,” ex-
claimed Tom, almost fiercely, though with wistful eyes.

“ Do you say that? No! I shall never marry anybody,
Tom. But I’ve been making up my mind what I will do.
I’ve thought it out — all. If they say such things of me
now, what will they say if I leave? No; ITl not give way
to such foolish chatter. I’ve got Oliver’s mother to think
of and work for; I’ve got to make every penny toward
making up what my poor father owes; I mustn’t be scared
out of what must be my whole life’s work by crazy tongues.
Maybe I shall never make up a hundredth part of father’s
debts; but I must try — I must make up all I can. They
may call me a witch; but they sha’n’t call me afraid to
work for my father’s good name because of my own.”

“You’ll stay at the farm? Then Ay; if it hasn’t

come yet, it’ll come. You’ll be the wizard’s wife as sure
as I’m the wretchedest man alive in all Porthtyre. It
mayn’t be to-morrow, nor next day; but that black wiz-
ard’s wife you’ll be. Why, if I hadn’t cared for you, I’d

/

GOLDEN BELLS.

Ill

have wedded you, just to save you from the devil’s
clutches, body and soul. So you, Susan Ambrose — so
you’re to be Mistress Nick of Zion Farm! Well — don’t
bid me to the wedding; that’s all.’’

“ Tom ”

But he had left the house itself in a rage; the first in
which he had ever been seen, even by his closest friends.
The wind burst in at the door, which he had to use all his
force to close. And that was one reason why, in brushing
past the kitchen window, his anger blinded him to a man
who was leaning with his elbows upon the outer sill.

‘‘ So you, Susan Ambrose — so you’re to be Mistress Nick
of Zion Farm!”

These, thanks to the stentorian wrath in which they were
spoken, were the first and only words that listening figure
heard. This was Oliver Graith’s welcome home.

How the knife of Lancelot Ambrose had failed to finish
its work I know not. I only know that at the moment of
the blow he still wore the talisman which, according to Old
Nick’s reading of the legend, preserved its wearer from the
curse of death in order to devote him to the greater curse
of life ; and that the stroke of an assassin is somewhat apt
to fail, through a trembling of the hand or a panic of the
mind. On this point persons of more speculative skill must
decide. However that may be, here was this man of nine
lives, who, after having been landed on a distant point of
the coast, had tramped many a day’s march to Porthtyre,
with pockets emptier than when they had contained noth-
ing but bread and chine.

But in other ways he was strangely changed. When,
after his discovery in the lagoon by &aise, he had been
nursed from honored patient into honored guest at the
Fleur-de-Lys, a prisoner of no worse jailers than Floriane
and Cathon, he could find in his heart no vengeance for
the man whose life he had saved. The thought of Susan —
to whom he had given such mere every-day thoughts in
the old times — came between him and her father, who in-
deed had now placed himself, even were there no Susan,
beyond any revenge open to mortal man. It seemed as if
they had both been under a spell. He tried consciously to
lash himself up into just hatred and vengeance against
surely the most treacherous scoundrel that ever breathed.
But whether from his weakness, or from some more occult
cause, the more he raised the image of Lancelot before his
eyes the more surely did Susan take her father’s place, and
regard him with mute appeal.

Love has strange ways of working, to be sure — ten thou-
sand times stranger than turning long affection into some-
thing warmer when one is recovering from death in a

112

GOLDEN BELLS,

strange land, and hungering for home ; when one firsi j
izes all that one might have lost, and even yet may ;
win ; when the home for which one hungers takes bu |
image; and when one’s better genius stands forth ij
true form, under her true name. 1

Enter, however, love did, without any miracle;!
neither Floriane nor Cathon remained in ignorance
there was a power beyond theirs spurring Oliver Gra I
get well. It seemed to him now that he had been Si I
lover for years: and it maybe that he had been, unav|
One may think one loves without knowing — why ma |
one love without thinking? ,

It was wuth the thought of Susan, therefore, in his j
that he came back, a seeming vagabond, to lay at he i
all the untold wealth of Hanno Sands. True, the mai j
had plundered him of his secret had doubtless been b* |
hand with him ; such a race as that was not likely to !
been lost by a repetition of the hare’s folly ; and to ex |
even what he had seen with his own eyes would take j
and I

And now, though every grain of Hanno Sands w j
golden guinea, there was no Susan — for him. She h i
need of him to become mistress of Zion Farm. !

Who was “Nick,” to whose wedding with Susaj
good friend Tom had so angrily refused a bidding? i
ever he was, he was clearly the new owner of the far |
it was clear that Susan — who was, after all, her fa' i
daughter — had played her cards exceedingly well. I !
true that Oliver had never spoken a word of love t< t
but angry disappointment does not stop for such tril i
those. In the light of the new lamp kindled in his
heart, what he seemed to see the most clearly was
Susan was waiting in the knowledge, too deep for
sciousness, that he would some day come back to hex
had given him all her faith and her hope— and th(
would come.

And he had but dreamed a dream. |

He could not enter thus and then. He must me( |
mother cheerfully arid proudly, as a man should to 's i
fortune had been kind past believing — not as one wh jl
just found out that there is something better worth wii l!
than gold and diamonds. As he wandered instinct :l
toward the farm, finding some hard relief in fightin j|
wind, he doubted whether he would return home a|l
He could contrive a private interview with Tom, lean
things Avere with his mother, realize what Ambi'os* ]
left him of his treasure in the sands, make her I’ich fo ,1
and then take to a wandering life in good earnest, t
would come back heart-whole— if that might eve

GOLDEN BELLS.

113

■ jsliould he see Susan again— like a fool? Whoever
|*k ’ ’ might be, he must needs be hateful ; some wretch
;i<jm Susan could only have sold herself for the farm,
jhe wandered on and on, past the corner where he had
gOod-bye to the home that he now knew was no longer
^ bidding good-bye, until the beams of the galloping
!>— a very witch -queen flying through the wind to her
l^t— slanted, on the great gray waste called Hanno
and the dunes that stretched out their bastions and
jlilis against the savage tide.

iell —he might be rich! Wealth is something, even
love has to go. The very wildness of the night
^ dreariness of the scene inspired him with his first
Pledge of what is rneant by revenge — for to show
that she had sold herself fora mere country farm
^ l by waiting she might have won wealth untold would
.:hong the jewels of the sands.

j:; had no need of his record to guide him. Every foot-

Ifr^'ery landmark, was far more deeply engraved on
|mory than on the bit of broken bucket he had given
way of death-warrant — to Lancelot Ambrose. To
with, he knew that by keeping along the edge of the
to he must come to where the watercourse found its
|nto the sea — that needed no record.

:y[how, it was a good night for revisiting his treasury,
enemy was not likely to be at work in that weather ; ;
anybody else at any time. And, not having yet to>
it , his footsteps, he had ample time for thinking. He;
t not bestow another thought on Susan, that was clear..

she must have cared for me once he argued;,
jtling with himself — '‘if ever so little; and ever so
3 was too much to let her set herself to catch the new
lief, the scoundrel! No; never will I think of her
^ There are better things worth thinking of than
||Uhere’s gold, and travel, and fighting the French,
fpleasure, and a thousand things. Yes — 111 see the
1^ world; see everything that’s to be seen, and do
that’s to be done— I’ll be a man.”

sand was stinging his face, neck, and hands, like a
ibn^ needles, and it was a luxury, on reaching the mouth
Be watercourse, to turn his back to the driving wind.
Vaded through the shallow stream, just above the
it where it was devoured by the surf, scrambled up the
jnass of sand in front, and then began to count the due
:u)er of yards or rather paces up the stream. He knew
exact measure of his steps, and so careful was he not
nake the slightest error, that, being once doubtful
Iber he were in seventies or eighties, he turned back,
iggled dead against the blinding, stinging wind to his

114

GOLDEN BELLS.

starting-point, and began again. Having told the exact
number required, he took his bearings from the pole star —
for the wind had by now swept every ray of sand from the
iron-gray sky — and set off on his new course in the same

way.

Not thus, when he first saw the vision of the buried tem-
ple, had he thought of returning. Then it was as if fortune |

had come out to meet him, with open arms, on the very i

threshold of the world — instead of luring him into a trap j

of buffets and scorns. Still less was it thus he had thought I

of coming back from what had nigh been his death -bed at |

the Fleur-de-Lys. Then it was as if he had been coming j

back, fortune’s conqueror, to a festival of love and joy. 1

He was revisiting it, despite all fortune’s favors, a beaten i

man, driven to drown the sense of defeat in gold as others j

try to drown it in wine.

He was no longer planning how he would expel poverty, |
with all its perils and evils, from Porthtyre. What, after
all, was that poverty to his, with all his riches? Well—
the evil spirits that enter into a man can easily find a less
congenial kingdom than the. moonlit waste of Hanno
Sands, while the wind raved and howled.

And a very little fancy could have seen such spirits |
themselves in the play of the moonbeams on the waving !
sea-reed, and heard them howling. j

At length Oliver Graith had made his last bearing and |
counted his last step — he was on the circumference of the I

small circle that must needs contain the stone giants that |

marked the entrance of the temple. He had every pit and
mound of sand stamped indelibly upon his mind ; both at
the temple itself and of the postern whereby he had :
emerged. And, barring the wind, the conditions of his
discovery were the same. It had been broad moonlight |
when he had made it; it was broad moonlight now. |

And behold ! There, full in sight, rose the tall gray col- !
umns with the black cavern between them. His heart 1

beat at the sight ; he quickened his steps, and covered the !

intervening pits and mounds almost at a imn. |

He * ♦ *

Alas! They vanished into moon- tricks before he had * |
advanced half-way.

And yet he could have sworn they were the same. He
came back to the edge of his circle, which he had marked
with his cap, and made another try. But he had not tried
for long before a gathering suspicion grew into a certainty
that the interior of the magic circle, though the place was
geometrically the same, had changed. They were other
pits, and other hills. j

GOLDEN BELLS.

115

Could he have made an error in his distances or in his
course? Impossible. He could as soon have erred in car-
rying the Liv^ely Peggy across the Bay of Biscay. No red
man could have had greater confidence in having followed
a trail. He rehearsed every step he had made since quit-
ting the watercourse, and could find no error. And yet

assuredly there had not been that mound No, there

had been a precipitous hollow; nor that pit, for there had
been a broken hill.”

And if this was not the place of the temple, where was
it, and where was he? Lancelot Ambrose, however prompt
and exhaustive his search, could not have carried off the
columns, or changed the surface of the ground. So he
widened his circle a little, still keeping the same center as
near as might be. A hundred times he saw the columns--
a hundred times they vanished as he approached them,
like some mirage that had startled him at sea.

Could his first discovery have been a dream? No: one
does not dream of gold and jewels and find them in one’s
hand when waking; one does not dream of things the like
of which one has never heard — any more than one dreams
of such a wind as had been blowing these three days.

Bewilderment was beginning to pass into despair. If
Susan could only have waited for him, he could have
borne this nearly as well as Midas bore the removal of his
golden curse; but now, this gone, all was gone. And—
could it have been a dream, after all? True, one does not
find real diamonds and real golden bells in dreams ; but he
had not got these things now. Had he ever possessed
them? Had it all been a craze of fever at the Fleur- de-
Lys?

Here stood the columns ; here on this very spot, if there
was any truth in the memory of man for where there is
gold. Was there nothing to mark a spot so sacred— not a
sign?

Oliver started. He was assuredly no coward; and
nerves had not yet been made. There was something to
mark the spot indeed. His feet had stumbled on —

A heap of sand? No: on a corpse, half covered; half ex-
posed; a hideous corpse with staring eyes, and even in
death stamped with despair; the corpse of Nicephorus Be-
drosian from Eedruth, clasping in his left hand a lantern —
in the other a chain whence hung two golden bells.

V.

It need not be said that poor Susan went to rest that
night, for once, thoroughly unhappy. It is true that noth-
hig had happened outwardly but two offers of marriage.

116

GOLDEN BELLS.

But though that, under the circumstances, was bad enc j
it was nothing to the way in which life, which she 1
grasped so boldly and thought she had grasped so skilli j
was slipping out of her hands. Mrs. Graith was slee j
in spite of the wind ; but there was no sleep for Si |
She had been as it were dared to stick to her dairy j
' compelled to prefer her father’s honor even to hen
good name; but she was haunted by the dread of som j
imaginable vengeance on the part of her master wh i
she held out or whether she surrendered. In the dep |
the night Tom Polwarth’s theories of wizardry impr j
her grewsomely — might there not be wizards afte]|
Could everybody be wrong? And if there were, then s
he was one ; he might be one, even if there were no «
in the world. Her father was no doubt in safety — h(
never been in her life, and had left her shame rather
sorrow. But Oliver? The faith she had given him
going out, and hope was beginning to flicker. Wouli
ever come back — and how? |

With sunrise the great wind fell: and Susan, w '
heavy heart, betook herself to the dairy, half expe<i
another visit from her master, whom she was now L I
ing to hold in strange fear. He was no longer the i
tesque miser, but — she knew not what ; only that al j
grotesqueness was gone. j

However, she duly attended to the cows and the cr
not much the worse for her anxieties, whether those
were deflned or the worse that were vague, till she (
rienced some slight relief when her master’s hour wen
and he did not appear. It would be something if she ( ;
be left alone even for that one day. [

But the relief did not last long. Just as she had ij
up her mind he was not coming, and then beginnir i
find a new anxiety in wondering why, she heard a j
along the passage — j

But it was only Tom Polwarth ; and then she felt ar |
Was he coming to persecute her again about this wi
of his — though, for that matter, he was becoming h(

, and here on her own ground?

However, her spirit was in no humor for battle;
after last night it was not for her to be unkind to a j
who only wanted to take her battles altogether on his !
hands.

“ Ydh’re wanted at the smithy,” said he, grufily. I
“At the smithy? Is anything — wrong?” |

“ That’s as may be. You’re wanted ; that’s all I km
“ Who wants me? Is mother — Mrs. Graith — she’s w
“Ah! The mistress it is. Not very bad, pr’al
but—” 1

GOLDEN BELLS.

117

Ib^ tell me, Tom! What has happened? Not ”

lOU’d best come quick, Miss Susan. And I don’t know

J.lpHly wanted this! Off she set, so that Tom’s stride
I tordly keep pace with her run.

into the house, Miss Susan,” said Tom, more
r if than ever. “ Into the forge.”

^ R darted into the gloomy place; and Tom Polwarth
’■'lily broke into a roar of laughter worthy of Vulcan’s
Pli'l'

‘‘[y he was between two fii'es, all the same. For the ’
itjl Susan’s eyes when she thought herself the victim ,
piece of clownish vengeance was more than matched
iif er’s angry look when he found himself betrayed
f friend to the girl whom he had sworn never to see ^

'[•

^ Id, like a wise man who finds himself between two ^
Jxe withdrew.

llfrere surely the idlest folly to waste words in telling
'l^ipliver Graith found out that Susan Ambrose had .
f p dreamed of marrying Zion or any other farm . Mis-
ffjj|standings of that baseless sort endure in fiction, and i
Alps in Bedlam; but people, even though they believed!

^ itchcraft, had still some grains of common- sense in',
latyre; and for this clearance there was needed no3
' than a quarter of a grain,
knew you would come back ! * I always knew it !” said!

! Tes, Susan — but bringing sheaves. And I have brought'.

. nothing; no, less than nothing,” he said, sadly..

were a false prophet. I have been in battle ; I have
J a prisoner ; I have been — near dying ; I have had!

and lost it — lost all; but this only ”

mat was this?

j ly a ragged watchcase, stained and frayed, with none
* 3 needlework decipherable upon it even by a wizard’s.
‘‘Ibut the fragmentary legend,

, “ Come what come can.’’

■it then Susan was not a wizard — only (according to Tom
jrarth) on the way to being a witch ; assuredly not too
igOne in the craft to have lost her woman’s power of
Sag what was exceedingly plain.

1 ♦ Jjc * ^ ♦ *

) here ends this story of the wonderful wind of Hanno

lore it began, and there it truly ended ; for what fol-
i is but the beginning of a new tale. For when the

118

GOLDEN BELL&.

wizard had been, as was currently reported, blown away in
the gale that had brought him— as was unquestionably in
accordance with the fitness of things — the authorities
thought fit to effect a forcible entrance into his house at !
Eedruth. They found many curious things. But they I
found no poisoned corpse, which must therefore have been i
buried with nothing less than a madman’s cunning — unless !
he be identical with one Lancelot Ambrose who managed j
to make a fortune in Spain out of the Peninsular War, and |
another, out of wine in Cadiz, where he died. A much |
more curious thing was found under a candelabrum : a will j
bequeathing Zion Farm and all other real and personal i
estate to Susan Ambrose, “because she is the only woman I
I ever knew who wasn’t afraid of me; and because she
preferred a penniless scapegrace to a million a year. So it i
was not Susan, but Oliver, who married Zion Farm ; and
plenty more besides. But nobody found a diamond disk;
and, to judge from the experiences of those who held it, a
good thing too.

In one respect Oliver Graith was one of the worst of
husbands. The secrets he kept from his wife were formi-
dably many. Never did she know that her husband had so
muclfi as set eyes on her father during his absence ; never
did she learn — but the string of what she never learned is
ungracious to write or read. It is more to the purpose that
she made so sweet and so true and so trusting a wife that
she was pleased to name her eldest daughter Floraine, and
her second, Cathon; her son and heir being of course
Oliver the third. And if a French prisoner of war was
ever lucky enough to find his way to Porthtyre, or any-
where within a good many miles round, he — but these are
state secrets. It is ill to record that Oliver and Susan Am-
brose gave aid to the enemies of King George.

For many a year the honest fishermerx would shake their
heads, and say, “Ah — there’s no such luck now as in Old
Nick’s time.” For to them he had been hon didble. But
Tom Polwarth remained a skeptic and a heretic to the last;
and the advance of education has brought public opinion
round to his views, or else has condemned them; but then
education and public opinion are— -I don’t know what— but
everybody admits that they are wonderful things ; as won-
derful as the wind of Hanno Sands.

It is a strange feeling, that of laying down one’s pen.

I don’t pretend to have made anything clear. Was it
only the wind that revealed the great Phoenician city for
one short hour to one pair of eyes? Was Old Nick a
maniac? And did Oliver Graith dream? Only this I know
— that the great Phoenician city lies buried still under
Hanno Sands, if anywhere it lies; and no doubt may be

GOLDEN BELLS.

119

found for the seeking. And as to a dream— one does not
dream into existence those two little Golden Bells that —
for have I not seen them?— hang in place of a horseshoe
over the lintel of Zion Farm. Yet are they not such pure
gold as those which rang for the wedding of Oliver
Graith and Susan Ambrose ; for those were bells of better
than gold.

[THE END.]

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Baarks the women of our households when they undertake to make theif
homes bright and cheery. Nothing deters them. Their weary work may
be as long as the word which begins this paragraph, but they prove theij
regard for decent homes by their indefatigability. What a pity that any
of them should add to their toil by neglecting to use Sapolio. It reducei
^e labor of cleaning and scouring at least one-hall XOc. a cake. Sold
Sdliroeers.

SOCIAL SOLUTIONS

(^Solutions Sociales).

By M. G-OBIN,

WouTvOer of the FamilisUre at Guise; Prominent Leaaer of Industries in
France and Belgium; Member of the National Assembly,

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
MAEIE HOWLAND.

I vol., l2ino, illustrated, cloth gilt, $1.50.

An admirable English translation of M. Godin’s statement of the
course of study which led him to conceive the Social Palace at Guise,
France. There is no question that this publication will mark an era
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730 Romance of a Young Girl, by Clay. 20

731 Leighton Court, by Kingsley 20

732 Victory Deane, by Cecil Griffith. 20

733 A Qaeen amongst Women, by Olay. 10

734 Vineta, by E. Werner 20

735 A Mental Struggle, The Duchess.. 20

736 Geoffrey Hamlyn, by H. Kmg£4ley..30

737 The Haunted Chamber, “Duchess’MO

738 A Golden Dawn, by B. M. Clay 10

739 Like no Other Love, by B. M. Clay. 10

740 A Bitter Atonement, by B. M. Clay .20

741 Lorimeraiid Wife, by Margaret Lee.20

742 Social Solutions No. 1, by Howland.lO

743 A Woman’s Vengeance, by Holmes. 20

744 Evelyn’s Polly, by B. M. Clay 20

745 Living or Dead, by Hugh Conway.. 20

746 Beaton’s Bargain, Mrs. Alexander.. 20

747 Social Solutions, No. 2, by Hwwland.lO

748 Our Roman Palace, by Benjamin.. .20

749 Mayor of Casterbridge, by Hardy.. 20

750 Somebody s Story, by Hugh Conway.lO

751 King Arthur, by Miss Mulock 20

752 Set in Diamonds, by B. M. Clay.... 20

753 Social Solutions, No. 3, by Howland.lO

754 A Modern Midas, by Maurice Jokai. 20

755 A Fallen Idol, by F. Anstey 20

756 Conspiracy, by Adam Badeau... .25

757 Doris’ Fortune, by F. Warden.... 10

758 Cynic Fortune, by D. C. Murray... 10

759 Foul Play, by Chas. Beade 20

760 Fair Women, by Mrs. Forrester. .. .20

761 Count of Monte Cristo, Part I., by

Alexandre Dumas 20

761 Count of Monte Cristo, Part II., by

Alexandre Dumas 20

762 Social Solutions, No. 4, by Howland.lO

763 Moths, by Ouida 20

764 A Fair Mystery, by Bertha M. Clay.20

765 Social Solutions, No, 5, by Howland.lO

766 Vixen, by Miss Braddon 20

767 Kidnapped, by R. L. Stevenson.. . .20

768 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and

Mr. Hyde, by R. L. Stevenson.. 10

769 Prinoe Otto, by R. L. Stevenson. . .10

770 The Dynamiter, by R. L. Stevenson. 20

771 The Old Alam’selle’s Secret, by E.

Marlitt 20

772 Mysteries of Paris, Part I., by Sue.20

772 Mysteries of Paris, Part II., by Sue.20

773 Put Your.self in His Place, by Reade. 20

774 Social Solutions, No. 6, by Howland.lO

775 The Three Guardsmen, byDumas.20

776 The Wandering Jew, Part I., by Sue.20

776 The Wandering Jew, Part 1 1., by Sue. 20

777 A Second Life, by Mrs. Alexander. 20

778 Social Solutions, No. 7, by Howland.lO

779 My Friend Jim, by W. B.^Norris ..10

780 Bad to Beat, by Hawley Smart 10

781 Betty’s Vtsion.s, by Broughton 15

782 Social Solutions, No. 8, by Howland.lO

783 The Octoroon, by Miss Braddon.. ..20

784 Les Miserables, Part I., by Hugo.. 20
784 Les Miserables, Part II., by Hugo. 20
784 Les Miserables, Part IIL, by Hugo. 20

LIBRARY.

ISSUES.

785 Social Solutions, No. 9, by Howland.lO

786 Twenty Years After, by Dumas .... 20

787 A Wicked Girl, by Mary Cecil Hay. 10

788 Social Solutions, No. 10, by Howland.lO

789 Charles O’Malley, P’t I., by Lever. 20

789 Charles O’xMalley, P’t II., by Lever.20

790 Othmar, by Ouida 20

791 Social Solutions, No. 11, by Howland.lO

792 Her Week’s Amusement, by “The

Duchess” 10

793 New Arabian Nights, by Stevenson.20

794 Tom Burke of Ours, P’tl , by Lever.20

794 Tom Burke of Ours, P’t II.,by Lever. 20

795 Social Solutions. No. 12, by Howland. 10

796 Property in Land, by Henry George .15

797 A Phantom Lover, by Vernon Lee. 10

798 The Prince of the Hundred Soups,

by Vernon Lee 10 j

799 Maid, Wife, or Widow ? by Mrs.

Alexander 10

800 Thorns and Orange Blossoms, by

B. M. Clay 10 j

801 Romance of a Black Veil, by Clay. 10 i

802 La«ly Vai worth’s Diamonds 10 i

803 Love’s Warfare, by B. M. Clay 10 j

804 Madolin's Lover, by B. M. Clay 20 1

805 A House Party, by Ouida .10 I

806 From Out the Gloom, by Clay SO j

807 Which Loved Him Best? by Clay.. 10 j

808 A True Magdalen, by B. M. Clay. 20

809 The Sin of a Lifetime, by Clay 20

810 Prince Charlie’s Daughter, by Clay. 10

811 A Golden Heart, by B M. Clay. ...10

812 Wife in Name Only, by B. M. Clay.20

813 King Solomon’s Mines 20

814 Mohawks, by Miss M. E. Braddon. 20
81*^ A Woman’s Error, by B. M. Clay. .20

816 The Broken Seal, by Dora Russell. 20

817 The Cruise of the Black Prince, by

Commander Lovett-Camei on .... 20

818 Once Ag.ain, by Mrs. Forre>ter . . . .20

819 Treasure Island, by Stevenson 20

820 Shane Fadh’s Wedding, by Carleton.lO

821 Larry McFarland’s Wake, by Wil-

liam Carleton 10

822 The Party Fight and Funeral, by

William Carleton 10

823 The Midnight Mass, by Carleton. ..10

824 Phil Purcel, by William Carleton. 10

825 An Irish Oath, by Carleton 10

826 Going to May nooth, by Carleton. ..10

827 Phelim O’Toole’s Courtship, by

William Carleton 10

828 Dominick the Poor Scholar, by

William Carleton 10

829 Neal Malone, by William Carleton. .10

830 Twilight Club Tracts, by Wingate. 20
881 The Son of His Father.by Oliphant.20

832 Sir Percival, by J. H. Shorthouse..l0

833 A Voyage to the Cape, by Russell. .20

834 Jack’s Courtship, by Russell 20

835 A Sailor’s Sweetheart, by Russell.. 20

836 On the Fo’k’sle Head, by Russell. . . 20

837 Marked “In Haste,” by Roosevelt. . 20

Any of the above can be obtained from all booksellers and newsdealers, or will b©
sent free by mail, on receipt of price, by the publishers,

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY,

Nos. 14 AND 16 Yesey Street, New Yo'~

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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